Nov. 28, 2007
The government of Washington, D.C., is asking the Supreme Court to uphold its 31-year ban on handgun ownership in the face of a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the ban as incompatible with the Second Amendment. The main issue before the justices is whether the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns or instead merely sets forth the collective right of states to maintain militias. Following are legal experts who can comment:
**1. FRANCIS GRAHAM LEE, Ph.D., professor and chair of the political science department at SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY in Philadelphia , has written and published extensively about the Supreme Court: "More and more recent research on the Second Amendment, and not NRA research, is reaching the conclusion that the 'intent of the Framers' was to protect individual rights to bear arms and not simply to ensure that the feds did not abolish the state militia. That said, two points have to be noted: Even assuming it is an individual right, the court has never found our constitutional rights to be absolutes -- there are cases of speech that can be prohibited. Secondly, there is the matter of whether the Second Amendment applies to the states -- the issue of incorporation. The court has, over time, incorporated almost all the guarantees of the Bill of Rights onto the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, but the Second has never been incorporated. Should it now be 'selectively' incorporated?" News Contact: Patricia Allen , [email protected] Phone: +1-610- 660-3240 (11/28/07)
**2. ANDERS WALKER, Ph.D., assistant professor of law at the SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY School of Law, is extremely knowledgeable on the history of the Second Amendment and constitutional law. Walker predicts the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the individual citizen in the Washington, D.C., handgun ban case: "The Supreme Court is likely to uphold an individual right to bear arms. Though many scholars claim that the Second Amendment applies only to a collective right, notions of 'collective' vs. 'personal' rights are themselves misleading. A close survey of the historical record suggests that the Supreme Court has always envisioned Americans keeping arms in their homes and using arms personally, whether for militia purposes or not." Walker received an M.A. and J.D. from Duke University in 1988, and a Ph.D. in legal history from Yale University in 2003. News Contact: Melody Walker , [email protected] Phone: +1- 314-977-2704 (11/28/07)
**3. BILL MATEJA, principal in the Dallas office of FISH & RICHARDSON: "This sets the stage for a gunfight, the likes of which we haven't seen since the O.K. Corral, and someone, be it the NRA or the Brady Center , isn't coming back alive." Mateja, former federal prosecutor who argued on behalf of the government in the seminal gun rights case of U.S. v. Emerson and previously oversaw the Justice Department 's violent crime efforts (including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) as senior counsel to two deputy attorneys general, was not surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court granted the District of Columbia's petition for writ of certiorari in seeking to overturn a lower court ruling that struck down the city's 30-year-old ban on private handgun ownership. News Contact: Rhonda Reddick , [email protected] Phone: +1-800- 559-4534 (11/28/07)
**4. STEPHEN P. HALBROOK is a research fellow at the INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE, author of the forthcoming book "The Founders' Second Amendment," and a winning Second Amendment attorney: "The Washington, D.C., handgun ban infringes on 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms,' which is every bit as much a part of the Bill of Rights as is the right to free speech and the right against unreasonable search and seizure. District residents are not second- class citizens -- they are entitled to all freedoms of the Bill of Rights. The Framers intended that an armed citizenry would encourage a well-regulated militia, which they saw as essential for a free state." News Contact: Elizabeth Brierly , [email protected] Phone: +1-510-632-1366, ext. 119 Web site: http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=517 (11/28/07)
**5. PAUL F. DAVIS, author of " United States of Arrogance" (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize): "The Second Amendment was intended to give individuals the right to keep guns for private uses -- including self-defense -- not to give states the right to maintain militias. States already aggressively compete in commerce, taxation, legal restrictions and issuing of licenses. The last sort of competition and adversarial rivalry we need among states is in regard to security by way of militias." Web site: http://www.PaulFDavis.com (11/28/07)
**6. MEIR FEDER, partner at JONES DAY, has argued appeals in the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Courts of Appeals across the country, with particularly extensive experience in the Second Circuit. He's also an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where he teaches a course on Supreme Court practice and advocacy. Feder recently commented on this Second Amendment issue in the Wall Street Journal blog listed below. News Contact: Bethany Hilt , [email protected] Phone: +1-216-928-3457 Web site: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/11/20/the-second-amendment-case-a-qa/ (11/28/07)
**7. TEX McIVER, labor and employment attorney at FISHER & PHILLIPS LLP, has written articles and counseled against allowing guns on workplace property. When the Georgia legislature considered allowing employees to put guns in their cars on workplace parking lots, he came out strongly against the measure and wrote editorials in local newspapers. While he supports gun ownership, he is opposed to anything that makes it easy to permit guns into any workplace. News Contact: Kevin Sullivan , [email protected] Phone: +1-404-240- 4248 Web site: http://www.laborlawyers.com (11/28/07)
SOURCE ProfNet
