These are bad days for Paul Hemeke and supporters. Just as people with a terminal illness go through the five stages of grief they see their world view dying and are experiencing a similar process. Here we have denial:
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the Chicago case is “unlikely to have much practical impact on most gun laws regardless of how the Court rules.”
“Even if the Court were to hold the Second Amendment applicable to states and localities,” he said, “such a ruling is unlikely to change the crucial holding by the Supreme Court in Heller that a wide range of reasonable gun laws are presumptively constitutional, and that the Second Amendment right is narrowly limited to guns in the home for self-defense.”
I love Helmke. He is depending on the fig leaf that Scalia gave the “reasonable gun control regulators”
…crucial holding by the Supreme Court in Heller…that the Second Amendment right is narrowly limited to guns in the home for self-defense.”
Um…that wasn’t what the Heller ruling held. What the ruling held was that the Heller case was only focused on the narrow issue of possession in the home for self defense and that they were pointedly leaving the broader issues to future courts.
I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Helmke statement where he didn’t misrepresent something.
Yeah, I know. The court answered just the one question which they wrote in accepting the case. Since that question wasn’t about carrying guns in public or what types of guns might be restricted in their decision they said something to the effect “this decision should not be interpreted as invalidating exceptionally dangerous weapons or carry in sensitive places” (emphasis mine).
I interpreted this as meaning “We will hear both sides then we will decide if all the other laws now in question are constitutional or not.”
Dark days, Joe. They have to have those guns off of you.
Are we awarding these people (all twelve of them) more attention than is warranted?
Lyle,
As long as they are being quoted by mainstream news sources we need to point out their ignorance, bigotry, and/or stupidity.
When they can’t even buy advertising space (as it used to be for the NRA in some papers) then we can back off some.
Joe and SailorCurt nailed it – the Brady Campaign exclusively exists on the “if we say it enough times, it must be true” theory – a common thread among supposed “liberals”/lefties, I would point out. As such, it is dependent upon us, as those individuals who relish our individual rights, to counter that incessant stream of lies whenever we come across it.
Granted, those lies are getting more desperate, and significantly easier to counter over the years, but you never know when they might make up something new.
Whatever, that is what Heller said. Helmke may just have a hope to hang his hat on. Think of all the times the Court went beyond the basic question and expanded the issue to achieve “social justice”. But in Heller they tailored their opinion to one narrow question.
I am not saying that is inappropriate, but it is different from other cases where they went beyond the scope of the question before the court. I wonder at the reason.
I don’t see any reason for optimism. I hope I am wrong.
They will never give up the attack on liberty.
Heller ruled on the bearing of arms in the home for self defense. The self defense argument won.
Self defense will win over victim disarmament whenever it comes up for constitutional review.
Gura is a genius for tailoring his court cases incrementally, first building the foundation of self defense as a human right predating the US Contitution, then going step by step to expand the judicial recognition of that right from the federal government regarding bearing arms in the home, to state and local governments regarding bearing arms in the home, and (in future) bearing arms outside the home.
He will win in each case because he has set the question before the court in a manner such that only one answer is possible – self defense is a human right.