SCOTUS to hear gun rights case

First the District of Columbia, now Chicago:

The justices will be deciding whether the right to possess guns guaranteed by the Second Amendment - like much of the rest of the Bill of Rights - applies to states as well as the federal government. It's widely believed they will say it does.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence is urging the court not to do anything that would prevent state and local governments "from enacting the reasonable laws they desire and need to protect their families and communities from gun violence."

The legal approach being used hinges upon this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Once again, Liberals and Conservatives have switched sides on the issue of states' rights, this time with Conservatives opposing individual states' authority to govern. And, once again, Conservatives are trying to use the plight of former black slaves (huge pdf) to further their agenda:

More evidence exists that the right to keep and
bear arms referenced in the Second Amendment was
intended and commonly understood to be protected
by the Fourteenth Amendment than exists for any
other element of the Bill of Rights. The only real
question, and the subject of the subsequent sections
of this brief, is where within the Fourteenth
Amendment that right is nestled.
1. “In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was
an outpouring of discussion of the Second
Amendment in Congress and in public discourse, as
people debated whether and how to secure
constitutional rights for newly free slaves.” Heller,
128 S. Ct. at 2809–10 (citing STEPHEN P HALBROOK,
FREEDMEN, THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, AND THE
RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, 1866–1876 (1998)). When the
39th Congress convened in 1865, members were
confronted with the recently-enacted Black Codes.
The laws of Mississippi, for example, stated: “That
no freedman, free negro or mulatto * * * not licensed
so to do by the board of police of his or her county,
shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind * * *.” Laws
of Miss., 1865, at 165. To invalidate such laws,
Senator Henry Wilson introduced a civil rights bill,
explaining that “[i]n Mississippi rebel State forces
* * * are traversing the State, visiting the freedmen,
disarming them, perpetrating murders and outrages
11
on them * * *.”3 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.,
40 (1865).
A similar South Carolina law led a convention of
prominent blacks in that state to draft a petition
stating: “We ask that, inasmuch as the Constitution
of the United States explicitly declares that the right
to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed * * *
that the late efforts of the Legislature of this State to
pass an act to deprive us of arms be forbidden, as a
plain violation of the Constitution * * *.” 2
Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–
1865, at 302 (P. Foner & G. Walker eds. 1980).
Senator Charles Sumner paraphrased the petition as
seeking “constitutional protection in keeping arms,
in holding public assemblies, and in complete liberty
of speech and of the press.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong.,
1st Sess. 337 (1866).
In response to the mistreatment of freedmen in
the South, Senator Lyman Trumbull introduced two
pieces of legislation: S. 60, the Freedmen’s Bureau
Bill, and S. 61, the Civil Rights Bill, both of which
protected, inter alia, the right “to full and equal
benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of
person and property.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st
Sess., at 129, 209, 211. He cited the prohibitions on
possession of firearms by blacks and noted that it
was “the intention of this [civil rights] bill to secure
those rights” and other “privileges which are
essential to freemen” from state deprivation.

This is just a taste of the argument, but using the 14th Amendment to preserve (their interpretation of) the 2nd Amendment could have a huge impact on individual states' abilities to pass laws, and not just gun laws, either.

Keep an eye on this one, folks.