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The Court Gets it Right on Guns
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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By Sheldon Richman

Those Framers clearly understood the principle of rights better than Stevens does. If one has a right, one may exercise it for any purpose consistent with the rights of others. Keeping and bearing arms for self-defense or hunting violates no one else’s right. So it is entirely consistent with the Amendment. Stevens’s conclusion implies that government creates rights and thus can create a right that could be exercised for one purpose (the militia) but not for others (self-defense). That would amount to a wholesale rejection of the Jeffersonian philosophy found in the Declaration of Independence and a repudiation of the American Revolution.

Can you pass the latest Citizenship test? Submitted by: Anonymous	There are no comments on this story Post Comments \| Read Comments
Here is a link to the latest Citizenship test. So how many of you would pass? Pay particular attention to question #5 it would seem someone doesn't want new Citizens to think the right to bear arms is real. (yes I know it is a trick question, like how many of each animal did Moses take onto the ark?)

Self-defense target of debate Submitted by: RPA-PAC Website: HTTP://WWW.RPA-PAC.ORG	There are no comments on this story Post Comments \| Read Comments
The Supreme Court's decision in the District of Columbia vs. Heller case settles a long, heated debate, finding the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own weapons for self-defense -- not merely a right related to membership in a "well-regulated militia." But last week's ruling doesn't end the struggle over gun control, nor does it mean gun regulations have been eliminated.

GA: Advocate Files Lawsuit Against Airport for Barring Guns
Submitted by: RPA-PAC
Website: HTTP://WWW.RPA-PAC.ORG

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The nation's busiest airport dueled with gun rights advocates yesterday over whether a new Georgia state law allows visitors to carry firearms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. City officials in charge of the airport declared it a "gun-free zone" when a law allowing people to carry guns on public transit and other places took effect yesterday. Gun rights supporters, including a state legislator who helped pass the law, quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the designation.

Abby Spangler Supreme Court/U.S. Capitol Lie-In Speech [video]
Submitted by: RPA-PAC
Website: HTTP://WWW.RPA-PAC.ORG

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Abby Spangler (founder, ProtestEasyGuns) speech at the Supreme Court protesting lax U.S. gun laws on April 16, 2008 ( the year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings). Double lie-in at Supreme Court and U.S. Capitol was part of a National Lie-In across America, with 70 lie-ins in 30 states, as thousands of Americans lay down to protest for stricter gun laws, including closing the gunshow loophole by requiring background checks on gun purchasers.

WV: Gun rights advocates bear arms to thank Ranson City Council members
Submitted by: West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
Website: http://www.wvcdl.org/

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At least four people carried exposed handguns into a Ranson City Council meeting Tuesday night when a group of gun rights advocates showed up to thank council members for dropping a proposed law that would prohibit guns at city recreation areas.

At least one other member of the group was carrying a concealed gun under a permit that allowed him to do so.

Ranson Police Chief Bill Roper, who appeared obviously tense, stood up when several gun rights advocates - one of them armed - approached council members to speak.

D.C. Council Discusses Handgun Law Ruling
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Gun rights advocates and those who support tougher firearms restrictions are giving D.C. Council members suggestions on how to craft new handgun legislation.

Wednesday's discussion comes nearly a week after the Supreme Court struck down the city's 32-year-old ban on handguns, ruling that Americans can keep guns at home for self-defense.

Council member Phil Mendelson introduced legislation Tuesday that still requires most firearms in the home to be kept unloaded and disassembled, but it adds an exemption for "immediate self-defense."

WV: Gun quiz: sensible answers Submitted by: West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. Website: http://www.wvcdl.org/	There are no comments on this story Post Comments \| Read Comments
Three straw men from an anti-gun paper that never met a gun control proposal it didn't endorse, believes concealed carry licenses should be rare, and chooses to pillory those who are licensed by publishing their names in its pages.

Supreme Court's ruling on guns has little impact
Submitted by: RPA-PAC
Website: HTTP://WWW.RPA-PAC.ORG

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A flood of e-mails, letters and telephone calls to this corner in the last week regarding a seemingly new right to handgun ownership are largely based on ignorance of the situation and/or erroneous assumption. A lot of people seem to think that last week's landmark Supreme Court ruling, in which the justices ruled that the Second Amendment does guarantee firearms ownership as an individual right, opens the door for everyone to go out and purchase a handgun. Well, folks, it does nothing of the sort. In fact, nothing has changed, and won't.

Brady Campaign and Brady Center Urge Bush Administration to Reject Guns in National Parks Submitted by: RPA-PAC Website: HTTP://WWW.RPA-PAC.ORG	There are no comments on this story Post Comments \| Read Comments
In comments filed yesterday, the Brady Campaign and Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence urged the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bush Administration to reject a proposed rule to allow national park and wildlife refuge visitors to carry loaded, concealed firearms.

Obama's Toothless Second Amendment
Submitted by: Bruce W. Krafft

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"'What works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne,' Barack Obama said after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Washington, D.C., gun ban. The Illinois senator was talking about gun control laws, but he could just as well have been talking about his interpretation of the Second Amendment."

"Although the amendment protects an individual right to arms, Obama says, it permits 'common-sense' gun control, a category that for him seems to include every existing restriction on the possession and use of firearms. That view not only does not fly in Cheyenne (and in many other places where presidential candidates aspire to win votes); it was decisively rejected by the Supreme Court." ...

Antiwar Radio: Brian Doherty on the Heller decision
Submitted by: motoboy

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"They did the right thing in the narrowest way possible."

[Audio interview with Brian Doherty, senior editor at Reason magazine and author of Radicals for Capitalism, discussing the recent Supreme Court decision on gun control in Washington D.C., how the court avoids issues it finds discomforting, the history of the courts rulings on gun laws and the question of to what degree the 2nd Amendment pertains to self defense from other private citizens and to defense from tyranny in government.]

NY: Press should not scoff at 2nd Amendment Submitted by: RPA-PAC Website: HTTP://WWW.RPA-PAC.ORG	There are no comments on this story Post Comments \| Read Comments
The Supreme Court struck a major blow in defense of individual liberty and common sense by affirming the Second Amendment as a specific enumerated civil right. The immediate reaction from the Journal editors is that such a right must be limited ("Gun rights need checks," July 1). It was a totally disgraceful, but entirely predictable reaction.

Court ruling opens the way to sensible gun regulation
Submitted by: Gun Legislation & Politics in New York
Website: http://blog.nysrpa.org

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The gun lobby has finally won its dream ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, but could it be that this is just the breakthrough that can finally lead to sensible gun control? Going beyond even what the Bush administration had asked of it, a 5-4 majority of the justices has held that "the right to bear arms" is a personal right and not, as federal courts have largely ruled since 1939, a provisional right pegged to maintaining public safety. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Constitution's Second Amendment asserts "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."

MD: Gun ruling sustains right to self-defense
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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The Supreme Court has upheld an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment ("Justices back gun owners," June 27). And I am thankful that five justices are capable of reading the plain meaning of the Constitution and enforcing its freedoms.

Guns are merely tools. By themselves, they do nothing. The person using the gun dictates whether it is used for good or bad purposes.

Gun restrictions such as the Washington law that the court struck down have the primary effect of removing guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens. This gives the advantage to criminals, who don't give a hoot about abiding by the law.

Second Amendment - No longer embarrassing
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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By Robert A. Levy

"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." That's the operative clause of the Second Amendment - nearly erased from the Constitution in 1939 by a muddled and confusing Supreme Court opinion in United States v. Miller. Last week, apparently embarrassed by seven decades without a coherent explanation of the right celebrated during the Framing era as "the true palladium of liberty," the court rediscovered the Second Amendment. More than five years after six Washington residents challenged the city's 32-year-old ban on all functional firearms in the home, the court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the gun ban is unconstitutional.

CA: Police address legal points in shooting looters
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Police Lt. Al Billington is concerned that residents evacuated from their homes during recent fires may be getting the wrong message about how to deal with possible looting.

An Enterprise-Record article June 17 showed a sign former Paradise mayor Ray Dalton posted on his property stating looters on his street, where homes were lost in the Humboldt Fire, would be shot without warning.

Billington told the E-R Dalton had a right to post the sign, but said it would be illegal for him to shoot anyone, unless he was defending his life, or the life of another.

Crackpot court
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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So, since the early 1970s, the NRA and its ideological brethren have pushed the novel, and unjustified, theory that private gun ownership (for other than state-militia purposes) is an enshrined constitutional right. Republicans latched on, and won over millions of working-class voters.

Now, five justices have turned this ludicrous idea into constitutional law, proving that years of nominations made to appease the far right have at last given us a crackpot Supreme Court.

Texas 'Self Defense' Shooting - Was It Worth Two Lives?
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Not even a week after the Supreme Court decided that gun bans are unconstitutional, a man accused of shooting to death two burglars who were robbing his neighbor's home has been set free despite the viciousness of his act.

If you'll remember the story, Joe Horn, a 61-year-old Pasadena, Tex., resident spotted two burglars breaking into his neighbor's home in Nov. 2007. He dialed 911, but despite being warned to stay in his home, he declared that he has a right to use deadly force to defend his neighbor's property and that he was going to confront the robbers.

D.C. gun law declared unconstitutional
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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The U.S. Supreme Court issued its much anticipated decision last Thursday when it concluded the 32-year old Washington D.C. handgun ban was unconstitutional.

On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the appeals court that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms and the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional, violated that right.

The majority opinion was delivered to the court by Justice Antonin Scalia, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr. joining.

Excellent Gun Rights Defense
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Check out this outstanding testimony of a woman who lost both parents to a lunatic who opened fire in a restaurant.

I don't know who irritates me more: people who empower politicians to confiscate our fundamental right to self-defense, or smug anti-freedom jackasses like Chuck Schumer who couldn't care less that this woman's parents would most likely be alive today if it weren't criminals who had the widest access to firearms.

GA: Atlanta officials face lawsuit after banning guns at airport
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Guns were the issue. But words and federal lawsuits became the weapons of choice Tuesday as Atlanta officials declared Hartsfield- Jackson International Airport a "gun-free zone," and gun advocates retaliated by suing them.

The fight over a new state law — one that permits licensed gun owners to carry concealed weapons in more public places — began at Atlanta's city-run airport, which handles 89 million passengers a year.

WA: Gun ruling Update gun-application process
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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"This is a win for all civil rights." That's what gun-rights advocate Dave Workman said about the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ["Gun ruling will intensify debate here," page one, June 27].

I am not well read on the this subject — this is strictly a matter of the heart for me. I know people who own guns, but I will never own one. In fact, I'm all for responsible, law-abiding citizens' right to "use arms in defense of hearth and home."

...

Everything must change with the application system. Mental-health providers need a reporting system that protects the patient as well as the public. An extensive network of information needs to be available during the application process.

CA: My handgun, my parasite
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Here is your Bush-loaded Supreme Court, for one regrettable example, addressing the much-misinterpreted Second Amendment for the first time in eons. Here is the majority of the court basically arguing that, in case you forgot, much of America still blindly loves its guns, and of course handguns are a nice addition to any God-fearing family's arsenal of ridiculous self-defense weaponry and therefore banning a device designed to do nothing but kill other humans is just plain wrong.

While Bloomberg Frets About Our Guns, NYPD Can't Keep Track of Theirs
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should "mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs," said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers.

"While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called 'slip-shod' operations," chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, "his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house in order before telling others how to operate."