Initial stupid question (prior to chewing the cud mind you):
What exactly is motive desired?
a.) Incorporation of 2nd?, (which could then lead to...)
Well let's go all the way back to the events that led to Cruikshank: local government officials stripped people of their arms without cause, for the purpose of doing them harm.
That would never happen today, right?
Yeah, right.
It DID happen in the aftermath of Katrina. People were stripped of arms without cause, and once disarmed were moved out of the city even when their property was in decent shape. It now appears that Katrina was used as an excuse to move lower-income blacks out - permanently. This wasn't proper AT ALL and the disarmament appears to be connected to it.
In the Cruikshank case, Federal authorities could do nothing about the abuse.
In a post-Heller world with the 2nd incorporated against the state (Cruikshank no longer valid), the FBI could investigate the illegal disarmament that happened in New Orleans and in theory, prosecute the cops who did it and the local officials who gave the orders. Or failing that, people could sue in Federal civil court to punish the civil rights abuses, including the (numerous) abuses of 2nd Amendment rights.
Ultimately, this is where we're going: using the Federal court systems (civil and in extreme cases even criminal) to control state and local abuses of our RKBA.
b.) national CCW?, (which might very well require...)
That's the one thing we're NOT going to get, not directly anyhow.
The best we can hope for regarding CCW is to get it established that we have the right to defend ourselves outside our own homes. The Heller court hinted at that (strongly) but didn't actually take us there explicitly because it didn't come up in Heller (we weren't asking for that yet).
Once "some kind" of outdoor personal defense is established, next question is "how"? At a minimum, a state could decide whether to do CCW or not, and if not, be forced into allowing the open-carry alternative.
That's what happened in Ohio: early this decade, we sued to get CCW. At the Ohio Supreme Court, we "lost" in that the court said we had no right to get CCW through the Ohio RKBA clause (which is quite decent) but in passing the Ohio Supremes said "but that's OK, your right isn't infringed because you can open carry".
"Oh really? Well that'll be BIG news for Toledo, Cleveland, etc. cops who've been busting anybody who open carries..."
And it was big news. It's likely the Ohio Supremes didn't realize what a shocker that comment was, because as a practical matter open carry had been harassed out of existence with no actual law against it. The Supreme's support of OC triggered large-scale open-carry protest marches, which netted us a damned good CCW system about a year later.
In other words, support for open carry can likely be leveraged into CCW in the same fashion elsewhere.
That said, even if a state like California supports CCW but not OC, fine, they still have to run the CCW system on a fair and equitable basis rather than the crap they pull now.
So we're looking at a patchwork, "checkerboard" set of solutions varying in each state, but all going in the right direction if we ride them hard enough.
c.) coast to coast acceptance of "Individual RKBA" even when not recognized by state constitution?, (which could/should require...)
Yup. California turns out to be a classic example: when their state constitution declares the Federal constitution "the supreme law of the land", "incorporation" becomes a non-issue as the state has auto-incorporated the whole US Constitution, amendments and all. So unless some court pulls a dirty, we RIGHT NOW have an RKBA in California where we had none pre-Heller.
d.) tempering Scalia's "reasonable regulations/restrictions" into a homogenous united nationwide coalition? (in way of consistent training/licensing... oh hell, call it well regulated as in a cohesive harmonious effort)
There will be certain minimum standards states can't ignore. These will develop over time but it looks like:
* Discretionary permit issuance is going to die;
* Home defense is always legal;
* Some method of personal defense outside the home must be allowed.
Past that my crystal ball is murky
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I hate things that challenge me to actually, you know, think. I need to print your essay on paper and allow myself to marginalize thoughts/questions.
Hey, we're in new territory here. That's understood.
Obviously this quest is a long term effort, how do you see it best managed?
You're kidding, right? What is this "managed" thing of which you speak?
Seriously, it's gonna be a dogpile. People are going to try every imaginable challenge. My main hope:
* We first start with various forms of cross-state-border discrimination (reciprocity blunders, CCW-for-in-state-resident-only programs such as California). I think those are MOST vulnerable because they run afoul of both Heller *and* Saenz, and don't involve incorporation. This is the "low hanging fruit" ripe for the plucking.
* Also easy targets: all forms of "discretionary permits", especially where abuse is common. CCW in California, NY, etc. This also affects local law enforcement sign-off on Class3 stuff.
* What I don't want to see is people diving right into trying to legalize the "most evil looking" types of hardware...street sweepers, 50BMGs, M4geries with big mags, Class3 stuff, etc. I'm not against these, please don't get mad at me, I'm saying these aren't the starting point.
[edited to add... why were the 2nd & 5th excluded from initial "incorporation"?]
They weren't "excluded" at all, the Supremes simply never got to them. (The pieces are the 2nd, 3rd (in their entireties) and the portion of the 5th covering grand jury indictment.) Everything else got "selectively incorporated" piece at a time across 60+ years in various cases.
Incorporation is by now so complete that it's more or less a dead certainty that the 2nd will be incorporated. If we can show that the old Supreme Court cases that say it's NOT incorporated are so revolving no lower court should support them (coughCRUIKSHANKcough) then we might get incorporation in some areas even before the Supremes rule directly on incorporation of the 2nd.
And that's a big goal of this document, to get the background info out there in usable circulation so that people know how to push for their rights, and where to push hardest.
:banghead:
Of course, Presser relies on Cruikshank, but given this long history of judicial abuses of logic (and throw in the tortured logic of the 4 dissenting justices in Heller) I don't really trust the Court to do the right thing here.
