Federal Court Strikes A Blow To The Second Amendment
A federal court just hammered away at the Second Amendment with an asinine ruling with regard to waiting periods.
The lawsuit, Silvester v. Harris, was filed over a California law that required a 10-day mandatory waiting period for a person to obtain a firearm even if they already passed a background check, have a concealed-carry permit and/or own a registered a firearm. The District Court initially ruled that the law was unconstitutional.
However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the District Court’s ruling, claiming that the law provided “a reasonable safety precaution.”
“A 10-day cooling-off period would serve to discourage such [criminal] conduct and would impose no serious burden on the core Second Amendment right of defense of the home,” Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in the decision.
The problem is that the court’s logic leads to a slippery slope. As Ammoland‘s Dean Weingarten notes, “If a 10 day limit is not a serious burden, why not a 20 day, or a 40 day, or a year? The court did not ask for or receive any evidence that the presumed ‘rational’ argument had any substance, had ever happened, or if any studies had ever been done to find out.”
Conservative Review‘s Daniel Horowitz points out that the law is indeed “a substantial burden,” and that the court’s ruling is part a broader, troubling trend of the lower courts working to undermine the Heller decision.
“Every single circuit that has heard cases on gun restrictions — the Second, Third, Fourth, Ninth, and 10th Circuit Courts — has ruled there is no right to self-defense outside the home in contravention of the plain language of the Heller decision and the undeniable text of the Second Amendment,” writes Horowitz. “They have also upheld state ‘assault weapons’ and high-capacity magazine bans in the Second, Fourth, and Seventh, and Ninth Circuits.”
Horowitz proceeds to call for “judicial reform,” as rulings like this make it all the more clear that the courts are not the answer for conservatives.
