http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-cont...icus_texas.pdf

The states that oppose the individual rights (6 states joined it) had
already filed a brief, available he



http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-cont...cus_states.pdf

Again, the overwhelming number of organizations, states, and so on are
filing on behalf of the individual right:


When you hear what the side advocating for the amendment not being an
individual right it makes you wonder how they got even six states to go
for
it. The legal and historical evidence is all on the side of it being an
individual right so you really have to do some intellectual contortions
to
take the other side.

No, it's not. Most of the legal "evidence" is on the side of it being a
collective right. The historical "evidence" tells us that the FFs
generally
believed in an individual right. It does NOT tell you that they were
addressing that issue with the 2nd. In fact, the case is stronger that the
2nd was all about militias.

The question is whether the presumption on which the 2nd is based included
an individual right -- a pre-existing right that precedes the
Constitution.
That's the main battleground in the Heller case.

It's beginning to look like the individual right
position is finally going to be accepted in the law.

Maybe. It's still a tossup. The Supreme Court will have to reach into the
"penumbras and emanations" to find for the individual right. That's the
approach that conservative jurists have scoffed at for four or five
decades
now. If they reach into that Pandora's box to find for an individual
right,
they'll have a hell of a time ever overturning Roe v. Wade, for example,
because that's what the Roe decision was based on, too.

It's not a simple situation. From all angles, this one is very complex,
with
numerous potential unintended consequences.

It's about time. It's
been well known for decades that the position that the amendment only
referred to militias was completely bogus.

Nonsense. No one "knows" it to this day.

Read the petitioner's brief, Hawke. Then read a couple of the amici for
the
petitioner. Those are the arguments on which most federal precedent
concerning the 2nd are based.

--
Ed Huntress

Once again I'm saying that notwithstanding legal arguments this is
ultimately a simple case. Does a right exist or not. Virtually all the
beliefs held by ordinary Americans for most of the country's history were
the same. The reason for the second amendment and the meaning of it were not
contested. It meant the people had the right to be armed and the state was
prohibited by the constitution, of all things, from taking them away without
a damned good reason. I'm sure if you asked Teddy Roosevelt if the 2nd
amendment gave the citizen the right to arms and not solely militias he
would have given you a resounding affirmation. It is only in modern times
that the idea that the amendment was all about militias, when
coincidentally, by then they were a thing of the past. But this question
isn't a new one or exclusively and American one. In Machiavelli's "Prince"
he discusses an armed populace and a disarmed one. The question has been
around for centuries and when the signers of the constitution wrote the 2nd
amendment there was no doubt in their minds what they intended. To
specifically prevent the government from disarming the ordinary citizen
whether for his own good, or to impose a tyranny. Either way the meaning was
crystal clear and only today is there any question about what it was meant
to do. Legal arguing is a completely different kettle of fish and is mainly
superfluous.

Hawke