FIFTH CIRCUIT AFFIRMS GUN RIGHTS,
SAYS SECOND AMENDMENT IS FOR INDIVIDUALS
October 17, 2001
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 N.E. Tenth Place • Bellevue, WA 98005
• www.ccrkba.org
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Alan Gottlieb (206) 999-6126
Joe Waldron & Dave Workman (425) 454-4911
BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON -– Affirming that the Second Amendment is an individual right, the
5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday reversed over 60 years of judicial misinterpretation and anti-gun revisionist history. “This is a milestone victory for gun rights,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear
Arms. “For years, the anti-gun establishment has falsely maintained that the Second Amendment only protects a ‘collective right’ for the states to arm their National Guard units. That myth has just been shattered.”
Gottlieb has just released his new book Gun Rights
Affirmed. In his book, available through Amazon.com, Gottlieb details the history of the Emerson case and the landmark decision by District Judge Sam Cummings, which led to Tuesday’s court ruling.
Although the court’s decision in U.S. v Emerson was to reverse and remand Cummings’ ruling that cleared Dr. Timothy Joe Emerson of a federal violation of the 1994 Domestic Violence Act, the 5th Circuit held that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of an individual citizen to keep and bear arms, “regardless of whether the particular individual is then actually a member of the militia.”
In his majority opinion, Judge William Garwood said the government’s interpretation of the 1939
Miller case – that the Second Amendment merely expresses a “collective right” – is not supported by historic fact. He further noted that, “we are mindful that almost all of our sister circuits have rejected any individual rights view of the Second Amendment. However, it respectfully appears to us that all or almost all of these opinions seem to have done so either on the erroneous assumption that
Miller resolved that issue or without sufficient articulated examination of the history and text of the Second Amendment.”
“This is the argument we have been making for years,” Gottlieb said. “The 5th Circuit panel has correctly interpreted both the
Miller case and the Second Amendment, and handed gun grabbers a stunning defeat. All of this is detailed in
Gun Rights Affirmed.”
Gottlieb acknowledged that in his special concurrence, Judge Robert M. Parker argued that the Second Amendment is “subject to reasonable regulation.”
“That will be the new battleground for gun rights,” Gottlieb predicted. “The anti-gunners can no longer pander the myth that there is no individual right to own a gun, so they will undoubtedly argue that ‘reasonable regulation’ includes every Draconian measure on their wish list, such as licensing, registration, one-gun-a-month schemes and much worse.
“We’re going to fight that battle,” he vowed. “It may take years, and millions of dollars, but we’re going to fight, and we’re going to win.”
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
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