TWO SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

[polski]

Ask Carl F. Worden why the Miller case was not used as precedence against the first AWB.

[SA Friday]

Ask Carl F. Worden why the Miller case was not used as precedence against the first AWB.

The Brady Bill was never challenged in the Supreme Court.

You cannot manufacture and sell firearms at will due to current laws also not challenged in the Supreme Court.

Courts change. As they change, the rulings change. There are a lot of reasons for SCOTUS to change the way they rule on cases, the most important being the members. The next would be the politics of the time. A prime example of this is the events leading to and resulting from the Miranda case. Right's advisements went from non-existant to required to a part of the 5th amendment. It took over 30 years for that all to happen, and if the Miranda ruling would have been challenged to the level of SCOTUS immediately after the initial ruling, the warnings would have died a swift and painless death. After 20+ years of their existence, SCOTUS determined it would do no harm to leave them in place, but cause harm to overrule the original case. This was all hashed out in Dickerson v. U.S. in 2000. So, in a nutshell, the politics involved in the decision and the change in Judges over that 30 year span made all the difference in the decision of the case.

The Miller decision, although fairly clear, is a blunt chisel. It's hardly ever used to determine a case. It was brought up in DC v. Heller, but SCOTUS avoided it like the plague in the ruling. I suspect (as many of us have) SCOTUS has seen this struggle to figure out just where the individual right to own guns was going to happen. I also think they want each individual aspect of it hashed out in court after court as a means to figure out its parameters. They didn't want to take a bite of that pie in the Heller case.

There is WAY more to self defense than the John Bad Elk case. It's not as clearly defined as this post makes out. The arrest was attempted without an arrest warrant and no immediate need to arrest. Basically, the cops thumbed their noses at not being able to get a warrant. Telling any judge "Fuck you" is a good way for them to all take it out on you. The civil rights being addressed were his 4th amendment rights, not his 2nd. At the time, the 2nd wasn't considered an individual right. There is no ruling associating this case to defense of ones 2A rights, and could be easily argued that it doesn't apply in the same manner just as a woman couldn't shoot someone attempting to stop her from voting because she is a woman.

There is a lot of legal support for pro 2A, but getting black-and-white about it when it comes to legal cases is a bad idea and any shooting can be construed as legally terminal.