Monday, June 29, 2009

Another Second Amendment petition before the Supremes

From SCOTUSblog, on the Maloney case out of New York, dealing with whether the Second Amendment applies to the states, and if so, whether nunchaku are covered "arms" within the meaning of the Second Amendment:
A Port Washington, N.Y., lawyer and martial arts enthusiast asked the Supreme Court on Friday to use his case to expand the coverage of the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” so that it applies to restrict or bar state and local laws, as well as those at the federal level.

James M. Maloney’s petition in Maloney v. Rice is the third case on that point to reach the Court in recent weeks. This one, however, seeks to challenge a ruling that has gained a special prominence because one of the judges on the Second Circuit Court panel deciding against Maloney’s claim was Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s choice for a soon-to-be-open Supreme Court vacancy.
...
The first question asks simply whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right (as recognized by the Supreme Court last year in Distict of Columbia v. Heller) applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The second question asks whether the individual right qualifies as “a privilege of immunity” of individuals, and thus applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privilege and Immunities Clause.

Maloney’s lawyers, in the new petition, urged the Supreme Court to agree to hear this new case along with the two previously filed to challenge a handgun ban in Chicago.

Hearing all three together as a unit, the petition argued, “would put before the Court the fullest possible range of factual and legal settings in which to consider and resolve the burning issue of Second Amendment incorporation.” ...

Article here. Read the petition here, and the petition's appendix here. Imagine that in New York, two pieces of wood connected by a string or chain is considered so ultra lethal that even mere possession of such a thing by residents of that state, in their own homes, is a crime.

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