The Rahimi case will be so interesting. The government chose a reprehensible human being that 99.9% of us feel should be behind bars for a very long time, as the person to test the waters on prohibitive persons rights and legalities. The main point as I see it is that a person like Rahimi shouldn't be out on bail based on what he is accused of, and if he is found not guilty, then we can discuss rights. That harkens back to a fairly vigorous and respectful skirmish here I was involved in many months ago regarding bail/no bail issues when it comes to patently dangerous repeat offenders being let out on bail before trial (in that particular instance for a murder spree).Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2024 7:53 am This issue -- the meaning of the Second Amendment in personal gun ownership terms, and the ability then of governments to regulate firearms -- was decided by votes, not reasoning, in District of Columbia v. Heller. It is still worthwhile to go back and read Scalia's decision for the majority, locating in this strange text a personal right to gun ownership, and John Paul's Stevens's dissent, reviewing the Second Amendment's text and finding that "when each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia."
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federa ... on-1962736 (Stevens, dissenting).
On the language and the (especially, perhaps) history underlying the Amendment, Stevens pretty much wins the day. But Scalia had the votes (Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito). It is still a worthwhile read for anyone interested in some of the reasons for our gun violence problems today.
Whatever room Scalia may have tried to leave for governmental gun regulation was carefully and deliberately narrowed by the Court majority's decision in NY State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which, fourteen years after Heller, the majority adopted a new standard against which nearly all gun-regulation is evaluated:
"To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.”
This tossed the government's ability to regulate gun type, use and ownership into the relative vagaries of historical interpretation. Heller was used in Bruen to simply state that the text is no longer even the starting point; the current majority moved the analysis further away from text and into determination of difficult historical events and reasoning. The result is that the Second Amendment in some respects is the most absolute of constitutional mandates now, without much of the balancing against other societal interests, which we see in the jurisprudence of other contemporaneously adopted Amendments, like the First Amendment. And so, we have gunmen visiting our churches and movie theatres and colleges and elementary schools and grocery stores and office spaces, with recourse only against that shooter, and not the underlying issue of gun ownership -- government efforts to regulate and protect are now functionally cut off.
The currently pending (argued and awaiting decision) Rahimi case will tell us how far the historical test, above, will go.
Rahimi nuances are well explored by the youtube channel of Mark Smith, Four Boxes Diner, in case one is interested. I found his explication to be very helpful.
