empire Flashcards
District of Columbia v. Heller
Supreme Court considers whether the District of Columbia prohibition on the possession of usable
handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution. SC Held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep firearms in the home for the purpose of self-defense, and the District of Columbia’s requirement that firearms kept in the home be nonfunctional violated that right.
Is it generally prohibit in The District of Columbia
to the posses a handgun?
It is a crime to
carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns IS prohibited
Who is Heller? What did he do and why did he follow a lawsuit?
Respondent Dick Heller is a D.C. special police officer authorized to carry a handgun while on
duty . He applied for a registration certificate for a
handgun that he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He thereafter filed a
lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia seeking, on Second
Amendment grounds, to forbid the city from enforcing the bar on the registration of
handguns, [and] the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits the carrying of a firearm in
the home without a license
How did the Supreme Court interpret the second amendment?
that the Constitution was written to be
understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as
distinguished from technical meaning. It excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to
ordinary citizens in the founding generation…
Petitioners … believe that [the Second Amendment] protects only the right to possess and
carry a firearm in connection with militia service. Respondent argues that it protects an
individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that
arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
how is the second amendment naturally divided?
The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause.
[O]ther legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose.
Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command.
The Second Amendment would be nonsensical if it read, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary
to the security of a free State, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall
not be infringed.”
operative clause a.
“Right of the people”
“right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition
Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment
uses very similar terminology.
All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual
rights, not “collective” rights .
Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to
“the people” refer to anything other than an individual right…
This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in the prefatory clause. As we will
describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range.
Reading the Second
Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia
therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the
people.”
We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised
individually and belongs to all Americans.
operative clause b.
“Keep and Bear Arms”
The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for
military use and were not employed in a military capacity…
Pre-Trial Oral Argument Case Law 2023
Some have made the argument that only those arms in existence
in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way.
Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of
communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the
Second Amendment extends to all instruments that constitute bearable arms even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.
Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”
At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” When used with “arms,”
however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—
confrontation…
Although the phrase implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the
purpose of “offensive or defensive action,” it in no way connotes participation in a structured
military organization.
From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude that this natural meaning was also the
meaning that “bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances, “bear arms” was
unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.
Elaborate on the meaning of operative clause and what they take of it in relation to the 2nd amendment
Putting all of these textual elements together, we find
that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.
This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the
Second Amendment.
Which part of the 2nd amendment is the Prefatory Clause
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to
the security of a free State.
Relationship Between Prefatory Clause and Operative Clause?
The preface fits with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Once one knows the history that the founding generation
knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had
eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but
simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to
suppress political opponents.
North Carolina also codified a right to bear arms in 1776: “That the people have a right to bear
arms, for the defence of the State ….” … The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution presented
another variation on the theme: “The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the
common defence ….” …ARGUEMENT THAT 4 OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS BACK THIS UP
followed up:
That of the nine state constitutional
protections for the right to bear arms enacted immediately after 1789 at least seven
unequivocally protected an individual citizen’s right to self-defense is strong evidence that
that is how the founding generation conceived of the right.
main arguement of motion limine
The Empirion State Legislature enacted The Responsible Firearm Sales Practices Act, 20 Emp.Civil Code § 2007. This law prohibits selling a firearm to a person whom the seller knows or should know from the totality of the circumstances is unfit to safely own, use, or possess the
firearm. The law took effect on January 1, 2022. In response to Defendant’s affirmative defense
challenging the constitutionality of the statute, Plaintiff filed a motion seeking a pretrial
ruling that its cause of action under § 2007 comports (agrees) with the Second Amendment to the
United States Constitution. Defendant opposes this motion, asserting that the Empirion law
is unconstitutional because it fails the standards of the United States Supreme Court’s
decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and New York State Rifle &
Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022).
My argument in simple terms?
Empirion’s law IS constitutional and District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and New York State Rifle &
Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen were different and don’t apply
ultimately what does District of Columbia v. Heller protect?
The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms for self defense, inside the home
what does New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen protect?
right to bear arms in public
Heller is a different situation because it doesn’t involve..
The Second Amendment is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any
manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Heller.
The Supreme Court made clear in Heller
that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on … laws imposing conditions and
qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,”
(emphasis added)
which is exactly the sort of
statute at issue here: qualifying the limitations on the sale of arms. To require a gun buyer to
undergo “training in firearms handling and in laws regarding the use of force,” as well as “other
possible requirements,” does not offend the Second Amendment. Bruen (Kavanaugh, J.,
concurring).
