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The day has arrived!  The Supreme Court will finally release its opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (popularly known as the Gun Case).  For those of you who have been living under a rock, Heller involves a challenge to D.C.’s notoriously strict gun laws.

In Heller, the lower court struck down D.C.’s gun laws because they violated an individual’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.  For many years, the federal courts treated the second amendment as some kind of anachronism that protected the states’ right to organize militias (like the National Guard).  This case has generated significant attention because the Supreme Court will now determine once and for all if the Second Amendment guarantees and individual right to bear arms.

 It is expected that the Supreme Court will reach such a determination.  Now before you get all excited and try to order a full auto Heckler & Koch MP5 and a mortar, you need to realize that the decision will (in all likelihood) have a limited scope (that seems to be the MO of the Roberts court).  I predict that the Court will determine that the de facto ban that exists in D.C. violates the Second Amendment, but it will not make a broader proclomation regarding gun laws all across the country.

It will place the de facto bans that exist in places like New York City and Chicago on extremely shaky ground.  And folks will likely start challenging those bans in the federal courts within days.

I cannot predict how the Heller decision will effect the rather strict gun laws that exist in New York.  It is likely that the decision will recognize the government’s interest in enacting some kinds of limits, but it will take further litigation to determine if New York’s limits are a bit too strict.  But who knows?  Scalia is rumored to be the author of the opinion, he might just go a little crazy and make it mandatory to own assault rifles.  We will have to wait and see what happens at 10:00 this morning.

Stay tuned!

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