right to bear arms

A finding that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to own a gun could also provide more solid ground for recognition of the right to abortion, to sexual privacy, to gay marriage, and to a wide variety of other rights that conservative justices on the court and “originalist” Constitutional scholars have long opposed.

Maybe now we’ll finally get to find out where the high court’s newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor, really stands when it comes to whether the Second Amendment guarantees individual citizens a “right to bear arms.”
That was a contentious issue at her confirmation hearings, with Republican gun enthusiasts warning that she doesn’t support gun ownership as a [...]

As the Senate begins deliberation today on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the outcome of the vote is pretty clear. As the Los Angeles Times points out, “the only remaining questions are whether the National Rifle Assn. can claim to have swayed votes against her and whether President Obama can claim [...]

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a longtime member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today said he will vote against President Obama’s first Supreme Court pick, Sonia Sotomayor, because “her statements and record were too much at odds with the principles about the judiciary in which I deeply believe.”
Hatch aggressively grilled Sotomayor during [...]

Perhaps unintentionally, the written followup questions from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor make a strong case that consideration of foreign law in the debate over the Second Amendment would doom Republican efforts to read a “fundamental right” to gun ownership into the Constitution.
As Sessions pointed out in his question:
Many countries [...]

After I wrote my earlier posts about how the National Rifle Association opposes the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and explaining the “incorporation” debate that dominated much of the Second Amendment discussion at the hearing, I got a note from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, whose concerns were decidedly NOT [...]

What is “incorporation?”
Among the many legal terms mentioned over the last four days of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, the term “incorporation,” when it comes to the Second Amendment right to bear arms, is probably the most confusing.
Incorporation in this context refers to whether the Bill of Rights applies to the states, as [...]

Although the National Rifle Association has — at least officially — stayed out of this fight until now (though judging from some senators’ heavy questioning on gun issues, it was clearly weighing in behind the scenes), this afternoon the group issued a statement saying it would oppose the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the [...]

Despite asking some of the harshest and arguably most patronizing questions of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over the past three days, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appears to be leaning toward voting for her.
Although he just used his questioning time this morning to charge her with engaging in “identity politics” and making speeches that he [...]

Second Amendment rights remain high on the list of issues Republicans are still nervous about when it comes to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. But no matter how they try to over-simplify the still-undecided question of whether the Constitution actually grants individual citizens a fundamental right to bear arms, Sotomayor has, as expected, stood firm [...]