The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in D.C. v. Heller this Tuesday. This will be very interesting...

but from what i hear, they wont be releasing a verdict untill june 30.

Here are some comments the judges have made during the arguments.

Chief Justice Roberts asks why the Framers would refer to "the right of the people" if the Second Amendment was not intended to protect an individual right.


Justice Kennedy says the first clause of the Second Amendment can be read as reaffirming the militia clauses, and can be read to support an individual right to bear arms.

Justice Scalia says he sees no contradiction between reading the second clause as guaranteeing an individual right and the first clause as affirming the importance of the militia. "The two clauses go together beautifully," Scalia says.

Here is part of an analysis of the arguments.
Go here to read all of it.

The Supreme Court’s historic argument Tuesday on the meaning of the Constitution’s Second Amendment sent out one quite clear signal: individuals may well wind up with a genuine right to have a gun for self-defense in their home. But what was not similarly clear was what kind of gun that would entail, and thus what kind of limitations government cut put on access or use of a weapon. In an argument that ran 23 minutes beyond the allotted time, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy emerged as a fervent defender of the right of domestic self-defense. At one key point, he suggested that the one Supreme Court precedent that at least hints that gun rights are tied to military not private needs — the 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller — “may be deficient” in that respect. “Why does any of that have any real relevance to the situation that faces the homeowner today?” Kennedy asked rhetorically.

With Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Antonin Scalia leaving little doubt that they favor an individual rights interpretation of the Amendment (and with Justice Clarence Thomas, though silent on Tuesday, having intimated earlier that he may well be sympathetic to that view), Kennedy’s inclinations might make him — once more — the holder of the deciding vote. There also remained a chance, it appeared, the Justice Stephen G. Breyer, one of the Court’s moderates, would be willing to support an individual right to have a gun — provided that a ruling left considerable room for government regulation of weapons, particularly in urban areas with high crime rates.

One of the most important aspects of the 98-minute hearing was the steadfast commitment that the federal government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, held to the position he had expressed in a brief that has come under heavy fire from the White House and from a wide swath of the gun-owning community. Clement had written that, while there should be an individual, private right to have a gun in one’s home, it should be subject to “reasonable regulation” by government. At the podium, he several times repeated his criticism of the D.C. Circuit Court for raising a higher constitutional bar to gun regulation — even though his critics passionately support exactly what the Circuit Court did in striking down the District of Columbia’s 1976 ban on any private ownership or use of handguns.

looking promising so far....

keeping my fingers crossed

looking promising so far....

keeping my fingers crossed

Keeping my fingers crossed also. I'm hoping for the D.C. decision to be upheld in toto.