If Roe can be overturned, so can Heller. A message for MAGAts...

[CaptainTruth]

Heller was the SCOTUS decision that established an individual right to own a gun.

From Wikipedia:

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee.


Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. District of Columbia v Heller was decided in 2008, much more recent & thus, according to Alito's reasoning anyway, not "deeply rooted in this nation's history."

This is just a point I've made to right-wing gun humpers who are cheering the impending fall of Roe, & it tends to stop them in their tracks, so I figured I'd share it.

Also, most MAGAts don't believe the GOP is trying to destroy American democracy, so this next point isn't always useful, but there are situations where you can make the point that if the Radical Right (which is what I call them now) succeed in eliminating true democracy & suppressing votes to the point that they're basically installing themselves as rulers, do you really think they will tolerate an armed public?

[Irish_Dem]

1. Time to take away the men's toys. They are out of control.

Need to be in time out.

[Torchlight]

2. The GOP spent 40 years slowly chipping away law after law

Taking the long game view, it was a brilliant strategy and appears to finally be paying big dividends on a grand scale. I've often toyed with the idea of playing out that same long game and applying it to Heller.

The same was implied as a means of legislative change by Dr. Willie Parker who wrote Life's Work, and in Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

[fierywoman]

15. And also defunding public education.

[maxsolomon]

3. I'd love to see it, but you're assuming quite a lot.

Thomas: 73
Alito: 71
Roberts: 67
Sotomayor: 67
Kagan: 62
Kavanaugh: 57
Gorsuch: 54
Jackson: 51
Barrett: 50

Decades to turn the court around in a way that would make that remotely feasible. Dems would need to make the next 4 appointments, probably.

Trump's Triumvirate could easily be there 30 more years.

[CaptainTruth]

7. I don't think I'm assuming anything, I'm merely stating that if A can happen, then B can happen too.

Which is true, it CAN happen if SCOTUS decides that stare decisis no longer matters, & that becomes the norm.

I'm also not say it WILL happen, I'm saying it COULD happen, which is the key point to consider if stare decisis becomes and outdated, perhaps irrelevant, concept.

[maxsolomon]

8. Alito pretty much stabbed Stare Decisis in the face.

But you're correct: anything COULD happen.

[LiberatedUSA]

4. Many red states have already said they will ignore a federal ban...

…on semi-autos, if one were passed and affirmed by the court. They would reason if blue states can ignore federal drug laws and legalize weed for them, then they can do it with guns. Their local cops won’t enforce it either or prosecutors in the same way some are saying they won’t enforce abortion bans.

So how do you plan on taking all those guns without a whole bunch of shooting and dying on both sides and bringing the economy to a screeching halt due to guerrilla warfare?

Those that already own their guns, aren’t losing them; especially if they live in a red state that is friendly to their gun ownership. Those states also do not have registration, so you don’t know who owns what or how many. They could easily hand over a few guns to throw the scent off them and pretend they have been disarmed. In fact, due to red flag laws in some areas, I would not be surprised if some gun owners have hid some of their stash in another location (a midnight red flag raid would then only obtain the guns they kept in their home; leaving them to drive to the hiding site and acquire their hidden guns when the cops have left).

[Angleae]

14. They can ignore it all they want, but they can't stop the feds from enforcing it.

[WarGamer]

5. Without a doubt...

[Ocelot II]

6. Heller won't be overturned. It wasn't based on the penumbral privacy right

that's the underpinning of Roe, Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell. The originalists don't think that right exists because it's not spelled out or even mentioned in the Constitution. Heller, however, was based on an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that allows for private ownership of firearms with some limitations, which Scalia agreed were allowable. This court is not going to overturn a Scalia opinion issued only 12 years ago that upholds a principle near and dear to the GOP.

[in2herbs]

10. I'm interested to know: did the Heller decision discuss privacy? It would seem that you

couldn't determine who lawfully owned a gun and who didn't for "traditionally lawful purposes" without some intrusion into their privacy to make this determination.

[Skittles]

11. LOL

the "pro-life" hacks on the SC won't do SHIT to upset their gun humping fans

[KS Toronado]

12. If we could prove the R party is turning Fascist

and then point out that Fascists always take guns away from civilians, maybe just maybe
a few gun humpers might think twice before voting R.

[Turbineguy]

13. Oh noes! That means they can't shoot

lubruls!

They can still hate, so at least there's something.

[FBaggins]

16. Probably not the most effective argument

There have been a number of decisions since Heller that rely on it and the court's liberal justices continue to vote as though Heller were not controlling. Heck, Breyer was pushing to overturn Heller just two years after the ruling was handed down.

IOW - you can't imply that the conservative justices shouldn't overturn Roe because a future liberal majority will decide that stare decisis isn't so important after all... when it's pretty clear that overturning Heller will already happen if and when the bench shifts.

[appmanga]

17. This is very unlikely...

...because Democratic presidents don't tend to elevate frothing ideologues to the Supreme Court. And Heller is based on an interpretation of language direct to the issue of guns. It's been a while sine I've read it, but I believe Griswold spoke of a "penumbra" privacy rights that emanate from other enumerated rights in the Constitution. Despite all the barking from the right-wing about certain words not being in the Constitution, the average person on the street instinctively understands the greatest right in this country, which also happens not be stated in the Constitution, is the right to be left alone and for the government to not intrude on you as you (as another famous document says) pursue your happiness. The part of the Republican party that isn't fascist is the American Taliban.

[AlexSFCA]

18. "arms" are mentioned in the constitution - that makes a difference for "textualists"

[SunSeeker]

20. AR-15s aren't. And why did they ignore the "well regulated militia" part of the text?

They don't give a shit about text. They only care about the result.

[SunSeeker]

19. And unlike Roe, Heller really was wrongly decided. nt

[sarisataka]

21. I have to wonder

Are women's rights to self determination worth so little that they can traded for a little gun control?

I'm afraid I know how some would answer.

[CaptainTruth]

22. One thing this thread has taught me is that when I post on DU I need to choose my words carefully...

...because it seems I'm often misunderstood & my most important points are missed by others.

That creates a difficulty for me because I'm self-employed, running my own company, & I don't have the luxury of ample free time to spend writing lengthy posts that make my meaning crystal clear.

I'm going to try to do better, because the alternative is to just stop posting & I don't want to do that. I care too much.