If we get a Heller-esque opinion, that incorporates could we see.....................

[MagnumDweeb]

...a slew of new lawsuits. I'm thinking with all that happened aftert Heller, it wasn't much but slowed the antis down some, if we got a state incorporation, how many suits do we think we would find being filed.

If we got some real Pro-2nd Amendment lawyers who looked up how to file Pro Se(do it yourself) for the average gun owner, and maybe left the necessary materials and "lost" the necessary means to argue the necessary positions.

If a hundred Pro Se plaintiffs file and a state or city has to come up with the resources, that might put them in some pain, and if after some of those cases went forward, another hundred brought suits (in each state or city as applicable), and so on and so on. If you could coordinate a thousand suits per city and ten thousand per state where applicable, and then run the public media game, hounding the defenders over every inch of their lives for the public media, what do you think could happen. I know that's not entirely original but we got use what works. I'm just getting ticked off and wish I had my J.D. already so I could start putting things in place to start going after these antis in court.

 

[mljdeckard]

Yes.

(Me too.)

 

[armslist]

Gun owners in America need to start bringing lawsuits left and right.

People ban guns because they fear liability if they don't. We need to make them fear banning them more than anything else.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

MagnumDweeb: "If we got some real Pro-2nd Amendment lawyers who looked up how to file Pro Se(do it yourself) for the average gun owner, and maybe left the necessary materials and "lost" the necessary means to argue the necessary positions."

I'd prefer to get paid. But anyway, all you need to do is walk into your courthouse and go to the civil window. You can buy the civil pro se packet, and a world of bother, for very little money.

 

[yokel]

Please don't bank on any post-Heller lawsuits seeking to invalidate laws against concealed carry, laws against "unusual or dangerous" weapons, licensure and permit laws, or laws against possessing weapons in "sensitive areas."

Perhaps in part to help secure a five-vote majority, Justice Scalia seems to have gone out of his way to explain that, "Yeah, all these attempts to abridge the right to keep and bear arms are fine and dandy."

Scalia's "sensitive areas" might well include the likes of post-Katrina New Orleans—places where the government is striving to preserve order but where the citizens are in most need of arms for self-defense.

 

[Sebastian the Ibis]

If we got some real Pro-2nd Amendment lawyers who looked up how to file Pro Se(do it yourself) for the average gun owner, and maybe left the necessary materials and "lost" the necessary means to argue the necessary positions.

I am a Real Pro-2nd Amendment Lawyer. And this is the absolute worst thing that could happen/is happening to the Pro-2A movement. Like most things, legal arguments should be left to the experts. Criminals and pro-se activists bring poorly prepared cases with horrible facts and lose, setting horrible precedent - Just look at Miller.

If you want to help, call you legislator, teach people to shoot, donate money or give a gun to an abused single mother. But, please don't go to the courtroom.

 

[usmarine0352_2005]

.

like most things, legal arguments should be left to the experts.

+1


.

 

[si vis pacem]

Though litigation is a fine tool, we ought to treat it more as a scalpel and less as a bludgeon. After having a conversation with Mr. Gura (et al.) and reading his brief, I believe Second Amendment advocacy is in capable hands.

Personally, I cannot wait to begin practice.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

si vis pacem: "Personally, I cannot wait to begin practice."

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

After fifteen years I'm getting out, at least for awhile, and doing something completely different. "Not today and not tomorrow, but soon ... and [(perhaps)] for the rest of [my] lives."

 

[si vis pacem]

Oh, I abandoned all hope a long time ago.

 

[mblat]

"do it yourself" lawsuits are probably the fastest way to assure complete distraction of any and all 2nd amendment rights we still have.
"If one defends himself he has full for a client". That goes double for constitutional law.

 

[P.O.2010]

Yes, there will be a slew of lawsuits should incorporation be found to apply to the Second Amendment.

All of those lawsuits, however, will fail.

As was mentioned by a previous poster, the Heller decision made quite clear with its talk about "dangerous and unusual" weapons the fact that no assault weapons ban will ever be struck down by SCOTUS on constitutional grounds. After all, you can't have an AR-15 but you can have a single shot bolt action rifle so that's not a complete prohibition, right? All weapons are inherently dangerous and as for unusual, well, that's in the eye of the beholder. Basically the courts have carte blanche to either break ground on behalf of the Second Amendment or stop RKBA dead in its tracks. Which one of those two outcomes ends up being true will depend on which district court you fall under and what state you reside in.

The only thing that Heller actually does is reserve to the individual citizen the right (if you can even call it that) to pay a fee to the government in exchange for the opportunity to be given official permission to possess a registered pistol in your home. That's it. As long as government extends the slender hope of being able to buy a six shot revolver and keep it in your nightstand your rights have (supposedly) not been violated. Heller is not the enormous victory than many imagined it to be. True, it could have been MUCH worse but it also could have been MUCH better as well.

If we want Vermont/Alaska carry to become the norm the way that shall issue is now, if we want the AWB to be permanently dead and buried, if we want the ability to purchase and possess fully automatic weapons without having to pay a special tax and jump through hoops then we will have to accomplish those goals legislatively because the Supreme Court is not going to recognize our rights to any of those things.

When SCOTUS handed down the Heller decision it basically said that anything other than a complete ban was acceptable. Those parts about "dangerous and unusual" and 'not casting doubt on longstanding prohibitions...' were intended to send a clear signal, and yes, get that fifth vote. Gun control isn't going to be abolished by brilliant legal oratory on the part of any one attorney or even a succession of attorneys. It's going to be abolished by hard work, education and lobbying.

Heller was not, is not and will never be the silver bullet so many, myself included, had hoped and prayed for.

 

[Rmeju]

I think a few here are being too gloom & doom. Heller was quite strongly worded in some respects. It was also clear that certain aspects of CCW and machineguns are probably going to be in the states' hands for awhile.

That said, more than a 6 shot revolver was protected. Licensing schemes, particularly burdensome ones like in NY, DC, and a few other places are probably quite ripe for legal action (yes, by the experts). AWB...that's harder to tell, but in no way that I saw did the court touch that in a meaningful way.

And for the record, the reason the court said that DC could give Heller a permit was because that's what Heller asked for and was something that Gura went to great lengths to avoid having the court decide on. If you look at the opinion, Scalia sounds almost disgusted that he wasn't asked to strike down the licensing as well, but since that isn't what Heller was asking for, he merely said DC had to give him the permit.

Is it a gunny's wish list? No. But it's a start, and it will have meaningful ramifications for a lot of suffering and deprived Americans.

Rmeju

 

[Pizzagunner]

The problem with Heller is that too many people who have no idea what they are talking about confuse the beginning for the end. Heller is a jumping off point, a toehold, an amphibious landing. It was D-Day, not V-Day.

The most important thing accomplished by Heller was in taking categorical firearms bans off the table forever. I say forever because the Supremes are likely going to respect Heller as precedent more strongly than the narrow vote that won it--their ongoing credibility to demands that response of them. Incorporation is now the battle. Win that one and the battles eventually move to state courts where ultimately, even the most rancid jurisdictions run into the fact that SCOTUS precedent ultimately invalidates their local bans.

Compared to the "Second Amendment doesn't really exist" attitude the courts could dismissively take for granted to deny our 2A rights in many federal and local circuits, Heller is a grenade dropped in their midst.

 

[Buck Snort]

"If you want to help, call you legislator, teach people to shoot, donate money or give a gun to an abused single mother. But, please don't go to the courtroom."

Well stated, should be enough to dissuade all but the most bull-headed on our side.

 

[Buck Snort]

"All weapons are inherently dangerous............."

I disagree. Weapons are innimate objects and therefore are neither safe nor dangerous. The MISUSE of a weapon is what is dangerous. This is an important distinction that is conveniently overlooked by our "anti" adversaries.

 

[highorder]

Scalia's "sensitive areas" might well include the likes of post-Katrina New Orleans—places where the government is striving to preserve order but where the citizens are in most need of arms for self-defense.

Good point. We won't know what any of this means until we have another law challanged.

 

[AllAmerican]

The lawyers here crack me up. At 42 I have given serious thought to going to law school.

Why? I figured it might help my political career.

 

[yokel]

Sounds like a bunch of Pollyannas who see the world through rose coloured glasses.

Some of you folks don’t get it.

You're still going to get an AWB and federal seizure of control over all private transfers -- and it is all kosher under Heller.

Heller was not a win for us in any real sense. It was rather a road map for the exponents of domestic disarmament by showing them their ways around and through their problem of how to "regulate" the Bill of Rights into insignificance and oblivion.

 

[Sam Adams]

Like most things, legal arguments should be left to the experts.

Agreed. I'm a lawyer, though not a litigator. I shudder at the thought of preparing and conducting a trial - and I have some legal knowledge as a base, and could build on it fairly quickly.

Nope, amateurs shouldn't bring cases. It is like trying to build a car from the ground up, including design. The average person (or even the above-average person) simply cannot do it well without training.
___________________
I agree with those who say that Heller is only the beginning. It is a salami slice for our side, much as the imposition of gun laws was itself done one salami slice at a time. It is far from perfect, but its recognition of the 2nd as protecting a fundamental right was key, as was the delinking of 2nd Amendment rights from membership in the militia, as was its prohibition of complete bans of catagories of weapons.

 

[everallm]

Sounds like a bunch of Pollyannas who see the world through rose coloured glasses.

Some of you folks don’t get it.

You're still going to get an AWB and federal seizure of control over all private transfers -- and it is all kosher under Heller.

Heller was not a win for us in any real sense. It was rather a road map for the exponents of domestic disarmament by showing them their ways around and through their problem of how to "regulate" the Bill of Rights into insignificance and oblivion.

We really shouldn't use the cheap and easy shot phrase of "tin foil". itls just too easy so I won't.

But that statement basically posits that Heller and Gura et-al is all just a plot and is really completely out of touch with all reality .

One shred of actual evidence as opposed to nebulous THEM and THEIR plans?

 

[yokel]

This ruling is actually just the result of sloppy and lazy jurisprudence instead of some cosey cabal.

What's happened in the courts since Heller -- there's already been a couple of lower-court decisions applying Heller because, as everyone predicted, this is going to lead to a wave of challenges to gun control laws on Second Amendment grounds -- those early cases have all, so far... rejected the challengers' claims and upheld the gun control law. And most of them have just done nothing more than refer to those sentences in Heller that say, "we don't mean to cast into doubt these longstanding laws."

But there's no argument, there's no justification of why those laws are good or bad. So it's a case of the sort of ambiguous dicta of the Supreme Court becoming really the key to a whole future jurisprudence. And it's why the Court sorely missed an opportunity to clarify what the law would be here.

 

[Rmeju]

Jeez Yokel...take a breather.

Of course the lesser courts are going to dump on the 2A. Now they just have to use different wording. That's ok. Expected even. What, exactly, did anybody think was going to happen in the local Chicago/Cali courts for those incorporation cases. It's nothing but the setting of the stage for the supreme decision.

When incorporation and level of scrutiny are decided, THAT is when we can start challenging laws that are in place regarding actual guns. Until then, we are mostly only deciding matters of law. And no, not every gun law will fall. But some will. Some really, really important ones will especially if we get strict scrutiny (which is the victory I'm most unsure of).

You really need to stop talking like the battle is lost. We've only fired one shot so far, and it was a kill, even if it wasn't pretty. Just because we've got more work to do, doesn't mean the enemy will overrun us.

 

[eye5600]

One way to read Heller is that, in the long run, gun policy is going to be determined in state legislatures and Congress. Personally, I think that the states are a bigger problem than Congress right now. Congress is not going to strike down the state AWBs in CA, MA, CT, etc.

The most immediate upside right now is that all those people who just went out and bought their first gun are declaring that the want RKBA. Legislators count votes.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

AllAmerican: "The lawyers here crack me up. At 42 I have given serious thought to going to law school. Why? I figured it might help my political career."

Don't worry; we crack ourselves up.

Forty-two is not at all too old to go to law school and become a lawyer, but you will have a hard time getting a grunt job as a junior associate at a large law firm. Those kids (and I was one, for years) work 60+ hour weeks and have no family, no friends and no life (they do make a huge pile of money, useful later in your career). It's like joining the Army at 41 or close to it. You have talents, skills, wisdom and judgment the young kids do not, and in the eyes of your commanders these and your family will pretty much disqualify you for service in the trenches -- but will qualify you for a lot of other legal jobs you don't want to take. Finding just the right job/practice at 42 will be a careful piece of work. Good luck!

Oh and yes, it is a political in. It gets you recruited for and appointed to no end of civic boards and commissions, which are the gateway to success in local politics.