What Heller Hath Wrought? (Update)
Eugene Volokh has been keeping track of all the post-Heller gun decisions, and has graciously put them altogether in one place.
So after all the hoopla, the 437 amicus briefs, the monumental Scalia decision at a minute before midnight at the end of the term, let's take a look at how Heller has changed the world.
[Silence; vision of tumbleweed rolling down the main street of a ghost town]
That's right. Nothing. Even Dick Heller was denied his gun permit. How bad does that suck?
I think Heller should get a refund. I think all the people who contributed to the cause should get their money back too. And cancel the order for the statue of Antonin Scalia with the AK47 in his hands.
But then, I told you the decision was a bust, so no refunds here.
But it will take time Scott. It's a start. It's a first step. Every journey begins with a single step.
Just keep telling yourself that, and keep your membership in the NRA current. Hope springs eternal.
Update: Wrong, wrong, wrong. As I learn from the WSJ Law Blog (via ajc.com) this very day, there is a school district in Texas that wants to let staff in carrying, and in Georgia, there's a bill pending to allow people to carry their weapons into church. Well that's certainly understandable. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition indeed.
Church is for sinners, right?
I was going to do a huge post comparing Heller to Blakely. Seems like the analogy is there. Both are supposedly "blockbuster" cases that, in the end, won't change shit.
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That sounds like a great post, much broader and more thoughtful than mine.
By the way, have I mentioned that you've been doing great stuff lately. Thanks.
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Thanks. If I'm been posting good stuff lately, that's only because it's been a good news cycle. My blogging tends towards the reactive. So if there isn't anything especially interesting going on, I don't have much to say.
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I'm not sure why you're more impatient than I am, but, okay.
That said, Brown was decided on May 17, 1954 (I remember it not terribly well, being only a couple of weeks old at the time); less than six months later, how many schools had been desegregated?
Nah. We're going to fight the politicians whose motto appears to be "gun control yesterday, gun control today, gun control forever" for years.
And Heller -- represented, of course, by Alan Gura -- is back in court.
Vinceremos, and all.
Jdog
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I admire your eternal optimism. You are my sunshine.
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Hey, wasn't it just yesterday that I was more cynical than you?
I think Heller will, looking back, be part of a huge paradigm shift that will meliorate other things that bother me a whole lot -- including, by the way, some of the issues with authoritarian police culture that bother some other folks.
Yup; I'm optimistic.
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I see you as a three-dimensional person, full of contradictions. As for your rose-colored view of Heller, we'll check back on it in 20 years. Maybe more.
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As the High Holy Days were approaching, a few years ago, after one or another depredation at a synagogue or JCC, a more or less local-to-me rabbi went to one of the few known gun nuts at a more or less local-to-me synagogue, and asked if, given some recent events, he and a few of the unknown gun nuts would consider carrying at shul. Just in case.
"Why the [obscenity deleted] do you think we've been sitting in the back all these years?" he inquired.
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