The issue before the court is 14th Amendment incorporation of the Second Amendment to protect from state infringement the individual right to gun ownership, recognized in DC Gov v. Heller (decided in the Appeals court as Parker et al. v. DC Gov).

The Parker/Heller conclusions have already decided all the courts need to decide on gun rights and firearms policy. Fourteenth Amendment incorporation will not foreclose the national policy option the courts have already opened the path for. It will only overburden the courts with a completely unnecessary constitutional mess.

A crude draft is at http://www.potowmack.org/McD2.pdf. It is about twice too long for the court. The approach is aggressive. The deadline for filing has been extended to the 2nd week of January.

Briefs filed in McDonald are at
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/feb2010.shtml#mcdonald

The Potowmack Institute
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation
4423 LeHigh Road, Suite 273
College Park, MD 20740

The Potowmack Institute receives no support from foundations or large contributors. This is still serious business. For concerned citizens who learn something here and want to help elevate public discourse, donations are tax deductible and can be sent payable to The Potowmack Institute, 4423 LeHigh Road, Suite 273, College Park, MD 20740
or click PayPal Paybox below for credit card donation. The Potowmack Institute is very limited by the tax law as to its lobbying activity. Concerned citizens who wish to form a 501(c)(4) membership organization for expanded political activity, please express an interest:
potowmack
then
at sign
then
potowmack(dot)org.
leave out then's and spaces.
The e-mail address is presented this way to defeat the spam miscreants

PayPal Paybox

Assaulting Jim Zumbo The NRA on Extremists NRA scams its members The Lionel Show AirAm Radio's ignorant, crude, ugly, air waves barbarian Dear John Ashcroft The armed populace doctrine at the DOJ The Washington Post cultivating ignorance. Gun Policy News news stories compiled daily. "Sixty Minutes" Failing its Mission NPR's Diane Rehm Civilized without Substance. A longstanding dereliction. Violence Policy Center The public health agenda falls in line with the NRA. AFL-CIO Getting it right but failing its mission in the larger struggle Militia Act of 1792 To enroll— conscript, register Return of Militia Inventory of private weapons in the early Republic reported to the President of the US History John Kenneth Rowland Lawrence Cress John K. Mahon Others Pseudohistory LaPierre's list The Quotes, the Quotes Fabricating the armed populace doctrine Libertarians, Conservatives Tenn. Law Rev., 1995 Chicago-Kent Symposium, 2000 What does the NRA want?

Update August 17, 2008 Update November 8, 2008 Update December 12, 2008 October 1, 2009 Briefs in McDonald v. Chicago, NRA v. Chicago http://www.chicagoguncase.com/case-filings/ The US Supreme Court does not belong here. The only reason there is a claim for an individual right to be privately armed for self-defense is that the gun rights militants, led by the NRA, work very hard and very successfully to defeat any legislation that would apply against the lawless because the same legislation would apply against its "armed citizen guerrillas" and others with insurrectionist fantasies. The Supreme Court cannot correct for failed policy. The courts have already decided all they need to decide in the conclusions of the Parker/Heller cases. The gun rights militants will fight viciously to defeat any legislative attempts to implement those conclusions. We don't have to worry that there will be political leadership that makes a difference. If Judge Sotomayor had had any political savvy she would have turned the Second Amendment questions around on the senators and asked, Do you accept and support the conclusions in Parker/Heller? Any member of congress who said, yes, would be viciously opposed and attacked by the gun rights militants. Supplemental briefs filed in Nordyke v. King in 2008 are available: http://www.potowmack.org/nordyke.html Insert August 31, 2009 In July, 2008, candidate Obama proposed that as president he would created a Civilian National Security Force. The proposal received no attention in the campaign. It has more recently become a source of hysteria among right wing ideologues. Search Google for "Civilian National Security Force Barack Obama". It was the subject of an hour program on Glen Beck on August 27, 2009. If the Obama Campaign was going to raise the issue at all, it needed to frame it in terms of both the Supreme Court's opinion in Heller, released in June, 2008, which affirmed registration for militia call up and in the context of constitutional history. Militia duty in the Second Amendment was conscript duty. It was a coerced civic obligation. Gun rights involve the most vital and fundamental issues and values of political and civic life. These are completely missing from public knowledge and discourse. Obama's Civilian National Security Force resurrects the original civic obligation enacted in the Militia Act of 1972 and is an opportunity for radical change in civic values against the ascendency of libertarian anarchy and political cynicism. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's President, Michael Beard, adopted the basic concept from the Potowmack Institute in his webpage, May 18.. In spring, 2009, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's Josh Horwitz with Casey Anderson came out with Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea. The Potowmack Institute started bringing attention to the insurrectionist idea in the 1990s. We critiqued it in our brief in the Emerson Case in 1999. Their concluding page states that this is not about public health statistics, which the gun controllers have focused on for decades, but civic values. It is long overdue to bring up fundamental civic values. The Obama team has failed miserable so far. What the political culture has degenerated into can be found in the anarchic ruminations of judges on the US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. See Nordyke. These anarchic ruminations are on schedule to be affirmed by the Supreme Court when it takes up 14th Amendment incorporation cases in its next term. This will take place completely outside of public consciousness. Insert May 3, 2009. Heard on C-Span's Washington Journal, May 2, 2009: Caller: Good morning and thank you Pedro for talking about this. You know my biggest concern is— the type of person they are going to nominate and put on the court. We have our Constitution. Those Republicans who voted for Obama are now going to pay the price for some of the decisions they are going to make including the right to bear arms and have your own guns. I think sometimes when that is what you are more worried about. I look at the history, for example, like what happened in Germany, Nazi (unintelligible). What happened in socialism, as well. The one think we had to do for sure was to overturn the courts, put them in favor of the administration so they could continue with some of the policies that were actually socialist or actually Naziism. The only safeguard we have in this country today against something like that is the Supreme Court. If you nominate someone like that who has that same kind of philosophy, who believes that guns should not be— should be taken away from people, you are going to have that problem day. So I’ll go for Democrats or Republicans who voted for Obama— I got to say one thing to you: Thanks a lot. So, let's enroll this guy in the militia and put his privately owned weapons on the militia inventory. so he can be called out to fulfill his constitutional civic obligation to enforce the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections (not make them), and repel invasions. There is a historic precedent for what he worries about. It happens when there is a government that does not understand what it means to be a government, does not understand that the rule of law, the state's monopoly on violence, and the state's internal sovereignty all mean the same thing. Look here. "Be careful of your heart's desire. It shall be yours." — Alexander Pope. Update April 27, 2009 We are all socialists now. The basic outline of present politics. Our Libertarian Deliverers on the federal judiciary will deliver us up to anarchy. The revised Nordyke was released April 20, 2009. http://www.potowmack.org/nordyke.html. Will ABC News get serious? http://www.potowmack.org/abcnews.html The time is ripe for full blown public hearings by congressional committees. It is no longer simple a domestic issue for the judiciary committees but is now international and a subject for the foreign relations committees. Viewers who show up here are encouraged to check if their representatives are members of either committee in the House or Senate and write to them to encourage hearings. The gun rights militants must surely want this. They can get out their message.

Update December 12, 2008

On December 1, 2008, the New York Times published the editorial The Gun Lobby’s Loss.

The Potowmack Institute wrote this letter to the editor, Dec. 2. It is about 270 words. It could have been edited down to less than 200 words and still conveyed the message. The letter was not published:

Dear Sirs/Mesdames:


How long has the New York Times been printing lame editorials and reporting on the gun lobby, gun violence, and gun rights?

There is a reason why the NRA worked very hard to sabotage and control the Cato lawyers' pursuit of the Parker/Heller cases.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/jul/22/20030722-093717-6859r/

The gun lobby cannot win the right it wants in court. The opinions in Parker/Heller were highly politically motivated, ignorant and fallacious [the NYTimes rejects them], but they gave an opportunity. Judge Silberman in Parker arrived at the conclusions that we can have "registration" for militia call up and "proficiency testing" and screen out the "unsuitable" for militia service.
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf, p. 54

These conclusions, not contradicted by the Supreme Court in Heller, are a devastating repudiation of the gun lobby's core doctrine that the purpose of all those guns in private hands, outside of the knowledge and reach of law and government, are to maintain an anarchic balance of power between a privately armed populace and any and all government. The gun lobby led by the NRA would fight viciously any attempts to implement Judge Silberman's conclusions.
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=28&issue=006

Judge Silberman arrived at the original militia concept manifest in the militia clauses in the Constitution, the Second Amendment, and the Militia Act of 1792 that militia duty was conscript duty and all about state-based military preparedness— nevertheless, subject to federal call up.

The candidates said they support the opinions of the courts. It was only necessary to pin them down on the specifics. The gun vote goes to Bob Barr and Ron Paul and is neutralized in national politics. The issue is still waiting to be raised with everyone under oath of public office.

Yours truly,
The Potowmack Institute

The "blatantly anti-gun" New York Times blatantly fails its public mission to enlighten the public. The story is simple and obvious. It doesn't have to take it from the Potowmack Institute.

In the 17th and 18th centuries serious public discourse was in the pamphlets,
http://www.potowmack.org/196intro.html
The pamphlets are now on the internet. The newspapers are two inches thick with irrelevant drivel and they are going bankrupt. They will not be missed. The people's right to know is satisfied somewhere else.

The New York Times will publish William Ayers' excuses and apologetics,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06ayers.html?ref=opinion.
We can question whether Ayers' political vandalism and protest were not something worse. What we will not learn from the NYTimes is that at his worse Ayers was acting out the NRA's childish political fantasy. The NRA gets a free pass on its claim of a civil right for its "armed citizen guerrillas". Meanwhile, Orwell's "large and uncomfortable fact" has made it all the way to the Supreme Court almost without notice. The NYTimes keeps the most vital and fundamental issues of political life very far removed from public knowledge.

The rhetoric now is all about "hope" and "change", "unity" and a new "social contract", but the Obama team has failed the knowledge and leadership to cultivate a vision that opposes the gun lobby/libertarian malignant, cynical, anarchic vision in which the enemy is the dreaded socialism. Without knowledge there is no leadership.

NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert Vol. 15, No. 45 11/14/08:

Last week, we reported on the anti-gun legislative agenda proposed by President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, headed by former Clinton administration operatives John Podesta and Rahm Emanuel. (That document was quickly removed from the official transition website, but you can still see it at
http://www.nraila.org/pdfs/obamaurbanpolicy.pdf.)
This week, it became clear that the new administration's anti-gun agenda even infects the process of staffing the administration. A widely disseminated questionnaire for those applying for administration jobs asks:
"(59) Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage."

Eric Holder, the Obama nominee for Attorney General, is a weak sister on firearms policy. He will not lead but there is nothing in his record below that is inconsistent with the Parker/Heller opinions:

http://www.kxmc.com/News/Nation/299395.asp

Back in 2000, when Eric Holder was a deputy AG under the Clinton administration, he answered a question about control with a rather long answer which details the fact that he has little to no respect for the 2nd amendment. Here’s a key excerpt (full answer here):
We know that there is not one simple answer, and we know that there is nothing we can do that will prevent every single crime or act of violence. But we also know that there are some common-sense things that we can do and that we must do. And so I want to add my voice to those who are calling on Congress to finally—to finally—pass these very common-sense gun measures:
* First, to require child safety locks for all handguns that are sold
* Second, to ban violent juveniles from ever having the ability to own guns
* Third, to pass the president’s handgun licensing proposal, which requires safety certification for all handgun purchasers
* Fourth, to support research in smart gun technology which can limit a gun’s use to its authorized owner
And finally, to close the gun show loophole by requiring a background check for all gun purchases at gun shows.

We have to go through all kinds of contortions because we cannot decide that citizens are citizens under law and government with civic obligation not individual sovereigns, laws unto themselves, in the State of Nature which is the state of anarchy.

We hear much discussion that we have transcended the sixties culture wars. McCain was pre-sixties. Obama is post-sixties. No, the Libertarian Right's agenda has always been to defeat the dreaded "socialism",
The New Deal and the Courts
Or, is all this just so much demagoguery.

G. Gordon Liddy is an articulate spokesman for right wing ideologies. He takes this a step further. In his interview with the Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik in January, 2005, he made clear the political cynicism of the Liberarian Right:

The way they [the Founders] attempted to guard against the tendency to grow and become tyrannical was twofold. One was to say, the only powers this new central government will have are the ones specifically enumerated herein, everything else is reserved to the states and to the people. Then there was the Second Amendment which was designed so that the people would remain armed so that if once again the central government became tyrannical the people would have the means to overthrow it and free themselves.

In "The Road to Socialism?", Philip Green presents a proper concept of socialism that goes far beyond the achievements of the Socialist Party and the New Deal:

Only if the great surplus of accumulated wealth were disposed of democratically for "the general welfare"— reinvested or distributed as income or services— would we be living in a socialist society.

This might be quite utopian and certainly a very distance and even farfetched goal in the present political culture, but most Americans support worker, consumer, and environmental protections, some form of government supported health insurance, a sensible energy policy that includes conservation and renewable resources as much as more drilling, and a government role in stabilizing and regulating the market excesses and crimes of corporations and financial and investment institutions. Capilalism is self-destructive without law and government. Even Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) who was the source of much anti-socialist ideology with his Road to Serfdom (1944), accepted restrictions of work hours and control of environmental toxins. For Hayek, the rule of law was the rules of the road not the specification of the destination. Many capitalist economies, nevertheless, function quite well specifying economic policy goals without going down Hayek's road to serfdom (socialism). The United States has done so for decades in defense contracting and may be about to set policy goals for the automobile industry.

There is another version of the dreaded "socialism". V. I. Lenin's State and Revolution, written in August and September 1917, was the last Marxist/Leninist tract before there was Marxism in power. Lenin wrote:

We are not utopians [sic], and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to suppress such excesses. But, in the first place, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression is needed to do this; this will be done by the armed people itself,...

There is no political or intellectual leadership that makes the advance of dreaded "socialism" part of our national consciousness and holds our candidates accountable for what they are really talking about. The great failure of the Obama Campaign was the failure to define in public consciousness a viable concept of government which in the twentieth century has included the dreaded "socialism" and hold its Republican opposition to the dreaded "socialism". Or, is there a great hypocrisy and deception? It is no coincidence that McCain's favorite justices on the Supreme Court are the ones who are committed to dismantling the New Deal Constitutional Revolution. They are also the same ones who voted in the majority in Heller. In that failure the Obama Campaign failed before the voters to define itself and create a strong, purposeful governing authority that will achieve its vision of "hope", "change" and "unity" all of which may involve more advance of the dreaded "socialism"— that is, rules of the road provided by law and government and maybe even some policy goals. It failed the opportunity to redefine American politics. The real polarization of American politics is between the dreaded "socialism" and some pre-New Deal vision of robber baron capitalism. The Libertarian Right does not even accept the constitutional transformations of the United States in the Civil War. Its entrenched ideological interests and hyperactive constituencies are not going to disappear. With a loss of political power they will become more obstructionist and vicious and there are plenty of rogue elements which no one has control over.

There are other failures. McCain supporters have denounced Barack Obama for his tenuous association with William Ayers, characterized as a domestic terrorist who hates America. Sarah Palin has her own associations with those who espouse insurrectionist and secessionist doctrines. The doctrines are pervasive in the present political culture. G. Gordon Liddy espouses domestic terrorism. Liddy hosted a McCain fund raiser. Does to pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands mean we consent to be governed under the laws of this country or is there some other vision that includes the NRA's "armed populace at large", which is armed outside the law? If the Obama Administration wants to promote unity it needs to start right there.

Twentieth century military machines are far from invincible when outflanked by armed citizen guerrillas.
http://www.potowmack.org/emerappd.html#ak47
http://www.potowmack.org/parkappe.pdf
p. 40

The former homepage through March 5, 2008, has been moved to a new file. Addressing Gun Violence contains more information.

The homepage from March 5, 2008, to July 16, 2008, the most important part of which is a letter to Walter Dellinger who argued for the DC gov to the Supreme Court, has been moved to "Whither the United States of America?". There are other important observations.

I. Sovereignty, the Rule of Law, the State's Monopoly on Violence.

In the courts' very politically motivated fabrication of a right of armed self-defense, what is completely unappreciated is that the gun rights militants did not get their right to individual sovereignty in the Parker/Heller cases. In the end Judge Silberman fell back on the original design and intent of military preparedness and a coerced civic obligation:

Reasonable restrictions also might be thought consistent with a "well regulated Militia." The registration of firearms gives the government information as to how many people would be armed for militia service if called up. Reasonable firearm proficiency testing would both promote public safety and produce better candidates for military service. Personal characteristics, such as insanity or felonious conduct, that make gun ownership dangerous to society also make someone unsuitable for service in the militia.
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf p. 54

These conclusions are a devastating repudiation of the gun lobby core doctrine. The gun lobby, led by the NRA, would fight viciously any legislative attempts to implement Judge Silberman's conclusions. See the NRA's Registration and Licensing Fact Sheet. There is nothing in the Supreme Court opinion that invalidates these conclusions. There is, however, no political or intellectually leadership that would exploit the opportunity the courts have given. Civic duty and individual sovereignty are in serious conflict but in the end civic duty triumphs even among politically appointed, highly ideologically motivated federal judges. Federal judges are under oath of public office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Those would include the NRA's "armed citizen guerrillas". Silberman's conclusions make the much ballyhooed individual right he seeks to invent and the core doctrine the gun lobby works hardest to maintain by defeating legislation perfectly meaningless. There are no challenges on this very fundamental political point to the candidates who want to be president of the United States.

It is a very offensive statement to some people but this is where we understand everything else in the present political culture: Our history; constitutional doctrine; evolution of the modern state; the performance of our lame, cowardly, pandering politicians; our shallow lazy news organs; the advocates; the capacity of a citizenry for self-government. These are all part of the same story.

This where we discover who we are.

This is not where we will find intellectual and political leadership.

Or, at least not so far. The urban populations that are suffering the scourge of gun violence have failed to change anything, but with the Heller opinion now in place as a guide for public policy, what may blow away the anarchic "armed populace at large" fantasy is the growing crisis of violence and sovereignty on the Southwest border. Public necessity could force big change very suddenly. When this country gets serious, it can get very serious.

US Must Close Gun Show Loophole to Curb Texas-Mexico Gun Running
San Antonio Express-News (Texas)
Editorial
6 December 2008
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/Border_gun_traffic_feeds_cartel_violence.html

+++++

Texas is Gunrunners' Land of Plenty and Source of Mexico's Crime Guns
San Antonio Express-News (Texas)
6 December 2008
http://www.mysanantonio.com/Gun_Running_Series_Part_1.html

+++++

Texan Straw Purchasers, Dealers Profit from Smuggling, Murder in Mexico
San Antonio Express-News (Texas)
6 December 2008
http://www.mysanantonio.com/Gun_Running_Series_Part_2a.html

+++++

Texas Gun Shops Fuel Drug Wars, 'Caught Between Profit & Conscience'
San Antonio Express-News (Texas)
6 December 2008
http://www.mysanantonio.com/Gun_Running_Series_Part_2b.html

+++++

US-Mexico Gun Trafficking Threatens Texans' Safety: Ban Assault Rifles
Houston Chronicle (Texas)
Editorial
8 December 2008
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6152163.html

We are not serious now. One of the great lesson of this website started in 1995 is that there is no constituency for a viable concept of constitutional government. The failure of political consciousness is broad. The Potowmack Institute was at the MillionMomMarches in 2000 and 2004 and could not find a single person out of hundreds asked who had heard of the gun rights cases in court. Meanwhile the gun rights ideologies have made it all the way to the Supreme Court almost completely without public notice or knowledge in Heller and received some qualified and ultimately rather meaningless "right". The gun rights militants follow these cases with intense interest. The gun controllers have not educated the public or even their own constituency. They haven't gotten beyond promoting trigger locks and suing the gun manufacturers. Instead of tinkering with its failed gun law, the DC Council could serve its residents with the leadership to change public consciousness but that is not likely to happen. The politically savvy consciousness just isn't there anymore than it is anywhere else. The "children of [anarchic] darkness" have nothing to worry about.

II. Sovereignty and the appalling spectacle of anarchic federal judges

III. Failing our history and historical concepts

IV. Civic values and the politics of the modern state

V. Guns and controlling political outcomes

VI. Toward a national firearms policy

VII. Adolescent insolence, insurrectionist fantasies and personal sovereignty

[PotowmackForum] interactive posting