Background info on the lawyer that brought the case before the Supreme Court.
" How A Libertarian Who's Never Owned A Gun Brought The Decisive Case On The Second Amendment "
" (CBS) Supreme Court decisions always have the potential to make headlines and provoke debate. Case in point: Its ruling this week on the right to own a gun. It's a cause one man worked long and hard to bring before the court, as we hear in our Cover Story reported by Martha Teichner. "
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4217235.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4217209.shtml
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Chris Powell, Managing Editor of the Manchester CT Journal Inquirer: Note the comment in the last paragraph
" So the Second Amendment to the Constitution does establish an individual right to bear arms and particularly to handgun ownership after all. While the U.S. Supreme Court was sharply divided as it reached that conclusion the other day, one may wonder why the Founders bothered to put the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights if it was not meant to be an individual right and a restraint against government, not meant to be another guarantee of limited government. If, as some contend, the right to bear arms was meant to be completely conditional upon membership in a militia, and not an individual right, there would have been no need to put it into the Bill of Rights, the Constitution already having given Congress the power "to provide for the common defense."
Constitutional interpretation aside, the court's decision clears the way for moderate and practical policies on guns. It nullifies the District of Columbia's extreme ordinance, which outlawed possession of handguns and allowed long guns in private homes only if they were unloaded, disassembled, or equipped with trigger locks -- that is, only if they were virtually useless for self-defense. But the decision allows states and municipalities to continue to require licenses for guns and to impose restrictions short of prohibition. As the House chairman of the Judiciary Committee of Connecticut's General Assembly, Michael P. Lawlor, quickly noted, the decision will not impair the state's gun laws, which are already strict.
The Supreme Court's decision will be lamented as a blow to fighting crime, but, as the District of Columbia itself has proved, the jurisdictions with the most restrictive gun laws are also the most crime-ridden. Because criminals disregard them, gun restrictions do little more than disarm the law-abiding who would protect themselves, particularly where the police are least adept. Besides, what is perceived as the country's gun crime problem is mostly just a matter of drug prohibition, as its gun crime problem in the 1920s was mostly just a matter of alcohol prohibition. "