Any day now the Supreme Court will issue its first decision on the Second Amendment since United States v. Miller in 1939. I'm no Second Amendment scholar, and don't intend to debate the legalities. If you read the transcript of the Supreme Court's oral argument in DC v. Heller, there really are no legalities to at stake anyway, its pure politics. Liberals were arguing that legislative decision-making is preferable to judge made laws, and conservatives were waxing poetic about the need for judicially enforced rights. Its Bush v. Gore all over again.
This has been a sleeper issue this year, but its going to come front and center.
It seems obvious that the Supreme Court is going to hold that the Second Amendment creates an individual legal right, so spare us the commentary based on commas and dependent clauses about militias. That argument is going to be history. Even Obama has said there's an individual right in the Second Amendment.
But that's the easy part -- how do you balance that right against a locality's ability to regulate guns and gun violence. Obama has said that he believes its an individual right, but also supports the right of a city to ban handguns, as DC has effectively done. He's going to be pressed further to explain that position. And the Supreme Court is going to come up with some new test to apply, and he's going to be asked whether he agrees with it, and how it should apply to handgun laws in City X, City Y, etc.
Fights over the Supreme Court may not just be about abortion anymore (they never were).
It seems democrats have been willing in recent years to concede defeat on the gun war. That was easy when you could just allow the status quo, but now there will be an effort to repeal existing local gun laws across the land. How is Obama going to handle it?
I offer no solutions in this diary. I have mixed feelings about the issue myself, as I don't like guns but I'm also wary of the government's efforts to criminalize the actions of a large portion of the country.