Jim Hood Rides Into The Next Gun Rights Battle . . .

This coming Monday, October 5, the United States Supreme Court begins its October 2009 Term. As always, the Court will issue its largest set of rulings (called "grants of certiorari") which decide the cases it will hear in the coming months.

One of the most high-profile sets of cases involves the Second Amendment. The Heller case, in which the Court decided that the Second Amendment did secure an individual right to bear arms, invalidated an ordinance in the District of Columbia. But Heller does not necessarily mean that the State of Mississippi (or California, or New York) cannot pass strict gun control statutes.

That's because in the nineteenth-century Slaughter-House Cases, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment does not automatically impose all of the obligations of the Bill of Rights on the States. Instead, in each situation where one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights has been clarified or enforced, the Supreme Court eventually decided whether that particular right also limits State Governments under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (The concept is called Incorporation).

Back to the present. There are three cases pending before the Supreme Court asking the Court to decide whether the Second Amendment bars State, as well as Federal, laws on gun control.

The cases are:

NRA, et al. v. City of Chicago, No. 08-1497; McDonald, et al. v. City of Chicago, No. 08-1521.

Issue: Whether the Second Amendment is incorporated into the Due Process Clause or the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so as to be applicable to the States, thereby invalidating ordinances prohibiting possession of handguns in the home.

Here is the Seventh Circuit's Opinion that it being appealed:


NRA 7th Circuit Op

Here is the NRA's Petition for Writ of Certiorari:
NRA 7th Cir Cert Pet

Here is the Brief of TEXAS (who else?) -- joined by many other States, including Mississippi (Jim Hood, no less) arguing in favor of the NRA

NRA 7th Cir AG Brief


So my red-meat eating, Red-State friends (not to be confused with my Red friends) can be happy with General Hood today, right? He rides into Little Big Horn with the rest of the posse. Yippee . . .