Supreme court to decide how far gun rights extend

[PETA]

It is interesting who newspaper articles start off telling you the case before the court will address and the rest of the article ignoring it.

Incorporation is the legal doctrine which applies the protctions of the Bill of Rights at the state level. Not all of the Bill of Rights have been incorporated. This is accomplished through the judicial process. A Chicago gun ban has gone up challened on the precedent established by the DC case last year. In order to apply the precedent the court must first decide of the second amendment, like many others, applies to the states as well as the federal government.

I do not see how Kennedy, or for that matter, any other justices could fail to incorporate the second. The justices may disagree with what the 2nd says but they'll tie themselves into knots explaining why others in the Bill of Rights apply to the states but the second does not. So much so that I suspect they'll recognize who foolish they'll look if they try. Still, 5-4 with Stevens, Ginsberg, Breyer and Sotomayor dissenting is my guess.


http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...58T44S20090930

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court revived the legal battle over gun rights in America, saying it would decide whether the constitutional right of individuals to own firearms trumped state and local laws.

In a brief order on Wednesday, the court said it would settle the question by ruling in a dispute over a strict gun control law in Chicago that bans the ownership of handguns in most cases.

Individuals and gun rights groups had challenged the law. Eighty percent of Chicago's 510 murders in 2008 were committed with guns -- among them 34 Chicago schoolchildren. (I wonder how many people were quietly murdered behind closed doors. Perhaps those murders suggest that the right to privacy is a dangerous thing?)

Gun control advocates said the decision was no surprise. They expected the court would merely reinforce last year's ruling upholding a constitutional right to bear arms narrowly limited to guns in the home for self-defense.

Gun rights cases have been among the country's most divisive social, political and legal issues. The Supreme Court split, in a 5-4 vote, between the conservative and liberal factions, in the 2008 ruling.

The ruling last year prohibited the federal government from imposing certain restrictions, but it left unclear whether the right also applied to state and local gun control laws. The justices are expected to hear arguments early next year with a decision likely by late June.

GUNS CROSS STATE BORDERS

The United States is estimated to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate. Gun deaths average about 80 a day, 34 of them homicides, according to U.S. government statistics. (Well, I'll go out on a limb abd suggest almost all of those deaths resulted from a human pulling the trigger so pretty close to all of them are homicides. The author may have meant murder. They are not synonymous)

Many researchers believe the few U.S. cities that have gun control laws are acting largely symbolically in a country with 250 million guns that can be easily transported across city and state boundaries. Gun shops are clustered outside Chicago's borders.

"The fact that there are two exceptions in the U.S. does not change the perception of the rest of the world that we are a gun-toting place," said Jens Ludwig, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and director of the school's Crime Lab.

"(Gun control advocates are) worried if the bans fall all hell is going to break loose. But it's not clear that lifting the bans will have the extreme adverse impact people fear," Ludwig said.

Gun control laws do not appreciably change the rate of household

New York has a strict permit process that amounts to a gun ban and if Chicago's ban is struck down it could create similar barriers to gun ownership, unless the Supreme Court rules broadly and forbids all restrictions.