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A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Does the Second Amendment prevent effective gun regulations? What is the right to bear arms? Second Amendment litigation has become a critical battleground since the U.S. Supreme Court held, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess a firearm in the home for self-defense. This decision created a radical shift in the meaning of the Second Amendment, but it doesnt prevent smart gun regulations. In fact, since Heller, courts nationwide have found a wide variety of firearms laws constitutional because they can help prevent gun deaths, injuries, and crimes in communities across the country.

The Law Center not only tracks the extensive Second Amendment litigation currently happening nationwide, but also analyzes the trends, to bring you the latest developments in the courts.

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Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence Second Amendment Rights

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Politics & 2nd Amendment Archives - Guns.com

The en banc opinion by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could set up a new showdown on gun rights at the Supreme Court.

At issue was California's law on concealed weapons, which requires citizens to prove they have "good cause" to carry concealed firearms to get a license. Plaintiffs challenged guidelines in San Diego and Yolo counties that did not consider general self-defense to be enough to obtain a license.

"The historical materials bearing on the adoption of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments are remarkably consistent," wrote Judge William Fletcher, going back to 16th century English law to find instances of restrictions on concealed weapons. "We therefore conclude that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms does not include, in any degree, the right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public."

Fletcher also cited the most recent Supreme Court cases on gun rights, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, which were major victories for gun rights activists, in making his case.

The Heller decision, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, solidified a Second Amendment right of the public to keep guns, but it specifically noted the right was not absolute, and Fletcher pointed out that Scalia cited restrictions on concealed weapons as a historical example.

The court was careful to make the ruling narrow. The opinion does not say concealed weapons are unconstitutional, nor does it make any decisions about openly carrying weapons in public.

The case was a blow for gun rights advocates, and sets up the fight on gun rights for the Supreme Court to consider, says UCLA law professor and gun law expert Adam Winkler.

"This case raises the next great question for the Supreme Court: Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to carry guns in public? And if so, what kind of licensing can states use to permit people to carry concealed weapons?" Winkler said.

The Supreme Court would not necessarily have to take up the case. The ruling does not create a substantive divide among different circuit courts in the U.S., one of the major factors the court considers in weighing which cases to take.

Four judges dissented from the ruling, with the main dissent by Judge Consuelo Callahan arguing that California's laws taken together amount to a substantial restriction on citizens' right to bear arms for self defense, as protected by the Second Amendment.

Whether the court does or does not take the case, the early 2016 death of Scalia looms large over it. Scalia authored Heller, the most substantial gun ruling in modern history of the court. And Republicans in the Senate have refused to consider President Barack Obama's nominee for replacing Scalia on the court, meaning the eight justice panel can split 4-4.

Without a ninth justice, Winkler said, it's unlikely the court would take up the case, even with Scalia's allies on the issue Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas still on the court.

Obama's nominee to replace Scalia, Judge Merrick Garland, was chosen in large part for his moderate record. But one of the most substantial conservative arguments against Garland has been that his record on guns is too liberal, though his written record on the issue is limited.

A partner for the law firm that helped argue on behalf of Peruta said that the plaintiffs were "disappointed" with the ruling but not surprised. He also said appealing to the Supreme Court is not a guarantee yet.

"An appeal to the Supreme Court is possible," said Chuck Michel, senior partner at Michel and Associates. "But significantly, the Peruta decision specifically avoided answering the critical legal question of whether, if concealed carry is prohibited, some form of open carry of firearms must be allowed. California law bans open carry, so the constitutionality of that ban will now have to be tested."

The case was primarily argued by Paul Clement, a former solicitor general under the George W. Bush administration and one of the top litigators for conservative causes at the Supreme Court in recent years.

Ever since the Supreme Court decided the Heller decision and a follow up case two years later, the Supreme Court has declined to take another major second amendment case, a frustration Clement cited in a 2013 filing with the court.

In the years since Heller had been decided many expected a "major consideration" or extant firearms laws, Clement wrote. "Instead, jurisdictions have engaged in massive resistance to the clear import of those landmark decisions, and the lower federal courts, long out of the habit of taking the Second Amendment seriously, have largely facilitated that resistance."

California state Attorney General Kamala Harris said the decision "is a victory for public safety and sensible gun safety laws. The ruling ensures that local law enforcement leaders have the tools they need to protect public safety by determining who can carry loaded, concealed weapons in our communities."

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there is no Second Amendment protection for ... - cnn.com

Hillary Clinton declined to say Sunday whether she believes in a constitutional right to bear arms, possibly opening the door to a fresh round of attacks from Donald Trump, who has already accused the likely Democratic presidential nominee of wanting to "abolish" the Second Amendment.

In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Clinton deflected twice when she was asked whether she agrees with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment. The court ruled in 2008 that the Constitution affords private citizens the right to keep firearms in their homes and that such possession need not be connected to military service.

The wording of the Second Amendment has long made the extent of gun-ownership rights a point of contention.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Questioned by George Stephanopoulos about her view of the amendment, Clinton talked about a "nuanced reading" and emphasized her belief in the rights of local, state and federal governments to regulate gun ownership. Stephanopoulos, formerly a top aide to President Bill Clinton, wasn't satisfied by the response.

"That's not what I asked," he replied.

Clinton then discussed the right to own a gun as a hypothetical. "If it is a constitutional right," she began her next answer, "then it like every other constitutional right is subject to reasonable regulations."

Here's the full exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about the Second Amendment. As you know, Donald Trump has also been out on the stump talking about the Second Amendment and saying you want to abolish the Second Amendment. I know you reject that. But I want to ask you a specific question: Do you believe that an individual's right to bear arms is a constitutional right that it's not linked to service in a militia?

CLINTON: I think that for most of our history there was a nuanced reading of the Second Amendment until the decision by the late Justice [Antonin] Scalia. And there was no argument until then that localities and states and the federal government had a right as we do with every amendment to impose reasonable regulations. So I believe we can have common-sense gun-safety measures consistent with the Second Amendment. And, in fact, what I have proposed is supported by 90 percent of the American people and more than 75 percent of responsible gun owners. So that is exactly what I think is constitutionally permissible and, once again, you have Donald Trump just making outright fabrications, accusing me of something that is absolutely untrue. But I'm going to continue to speak out for comprehensive background checks; closing the gun-show loophole; closing the online loophole; closing the so-called Charleston loophole;reversing the bill that Senator[Bernie] Sanders voted for and I voted against, giving immunity from liability to gun makers and sellers. I think all of that can and should be done, and it is, in my view, consistent with the Constitution.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, and the Heller decision also says there can be some restrictions. But that's not what I asked. I said, "Do you believe their conclusion that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right?"

CLINTON: If it is a constitutional right, then it like every other constitutional right is subject to reasonable regulations. And what people have done with that decision is to take it as far as they possibly can and reject what has been our history from the very beginning of the republic, where some of the earliest laws that were passed were about firearms. So I think it's important to recognize that reasonable people can say, as I do, responsible gun owners have a right. I have no objection to that. But the rest of the American public has a right to require certain kinds of regulatory, responsible actions to protect everyone else.

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Hillary Clinton wavers on Second Amendment right to bear ...

I teach the Constitution for a living. I revere the document when it is used to further social justice and make our country a more inclusive one. I admire the Founders for establishing a representative democracy that has survived for over two centuries.

But sometimes we just have to acknowledge that the Founders and the Constitution are wrong. This is one of those times. We need to say loud and clear: The Second Amendment must be repealed.

As much as we have a culture of reverence for the founding generation, it's important to understand that they got it wrong and got it wrong often. Unfortunately, in many instances, they enshrined those faults in the Constitution. For instance, most people don't know it now, but under the original document, Mitt Romney would be serving as President Obama's vice president right now because he was the runner-up in the last presidential election. That part of the Constitution was fixed by the Twelfth Amendment, which set up the system we currently have of the president and vice president running for office together.

Much more profoundly, the Framers and the Constitution were wildly wrong on race. They enshrined slavery into the Constitution in multiple ways, including taking the extreme step of prohibiting the Constitution from being amended to stop the slave trade in the country's first 20years. They also blatantly wrote racism into the Constitution by counting slaves as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation. It took a bloody civil war to fix these constitutional flaws (and then another 150 years, and counting, to try to fix the societal consequences of them).

There are others flaws that have been fixed (such as about voting and Presidential succession), and still other flaws that have not yet been fixed (such as about equal rights for women and land-based representation in the Senate), but the point is the same there is absolutely nothing permanently sacrosanct about the Founders and the Constitution. They were deeply flawed people, it was and is a flawed document, and when we think about how to make our country a more perfect union, we must operate with those principles in mind.

In the face of yet another mass shooting, now is the time to acknowledge a profound but obvious truth the Second Amendment is wrong for this country and needs to be jettisoned. We can do that through a Constitutional amendment. It's been done before (when the Twenty-First Amendment repealed prohibition in the Eighteenth), and it must be done now.

The Second Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the AR-15assault rifle and many of the advances of modern weaponry were long from being invented or popularized.

Sure, the Founders knew that the world evolved and that technology changed, but the weapons of today that are easily accessible are vastly different than anything that existed in 1791. When the Second Amendment was written, the Founders didn't have to weigh the risks of one man killing 49and injuring 53 all by himself. Now we do, and the risk-benefit analysis of 1791 is flatly irrelevant to the risk-benefit analysis of today.

Gun-rights advocates like to make this all about liberty, insisting that their freedom to bear arms is of utmost importance and that restricting their freedom would be a violation of basic rights.

But liberty is not a one way street. It also includes the liberty to enjoy a night out with friends, loving who you want to love, dancing how you want to dance, in a club that has historically provided a refuge from the hate and fear that surrounds you. It also includes the liberty to go to and send your kids to kindergarten and first grade so that they can begin to be infused with a love of learning. It includes the liberty to go to a movie, to your religious house of worship, to college, to work, to an abortion clinic, go to a hair salon, to a community center, to the supermarket, to go anywhere and feel that you are free to do to so without having to weigh the risk of being gunned downby someone wielding a weapon that can easily kill you and countless others.

The liberty of some to own guns cannot take precedence over the liberty of everyone to live their lives free from the risk of being easily murdered. It has for too long, and we must now say no more.

Finally, if we take the gun-rights lobby at their word, the Second Amendment is a suicide pact. As they say over and over, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. In other words, please the gun manufacturers by arming even the vast majority of Americans who do not own a gun.

Just think of what would have happened in the Orlando night-club Saturday night if there had been many others armed. In a crowded, dark, loud dance club, after the shooter began firing, imagine if others took out their guns and started firing back. Yes, maybe they would have killed the shooter, but how would anyone else have known what exactly was going on? How would it not have devolved into mass confusion and fear followed by a large-scale shootout without anyone knowing who was the good guy with a gun, who was the bad guy with a gun, and who was just caught in the middle? The death toll could have been much higher if more people were armed.

The gun-rights lobby's mantra that more people need guns will lead to an obvious result more people will be killed. We'd be walking down a road in which blood baths are a common occurrence, all because the Second Amendment allows them to be.

At this point, bickering about the niceties of textual interpretation, whether the history of the amendment supports this view or that, and how legislators can solve this problem within the confines of the constitution is useless drivel that will lead to more of the same. We need a mass movement of those who are fed up with the long-dead Founders' view of the world ruling current day politics. A mass movement of those who will stand up and say that our founding document was wrong and needs to be changed. A mass movement of those who will thumb their nose at the NRA, an organization that is nothing more than the political wing of the country's gun manufacturers, and say enough is enough.

The Second Amendment must be repealed, and it is the essence of American democracy to say so.

Watch four pro-gun arguments we're sick of hearing.

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Why It's Time to Repeal the Second Amendment