BERT PAUL wrote in a message to ALEX VASAUSKAS:
AV> I have written to the NRA and been advised that the lawsuit
AV> it is backing to overturn the assault-weapons-and-high-
AV> capacity-magazines ban did not raise the 2nd Amendment as an
AV> issue.
 BP> The US Supreme Court has consistently refused to take 2nd Amendment
 BP> cases since the Miller case in 1939 when only the Government's side
 BP> was heard.  The lower level courts just ignore the Miller decision,
 BP> so it doesn't do any good to raise this issue.  The NRA has also
 BP> been removed as a plantiff in the "assualt weapons", magazine ban
 BP> case anyway. The Appeals Court said they didn't even have standing
 BP> to challenge it.
According to the correspondence I posted along with the above and
the latest _National Rifleman_, the standing dismissal was overturned.
But, even if the NRA didn't have standing, this doesn't mean that it
couldn't sponsor citizens who do have standing in order to assure that
their cases turn out right and that everyone else's are thereby
protected -- kind of like the ACLU does (although, hypocritically,
the ACLU doesn't care about 2nd Amendment civil liberties or the
fact that there may not be civil liberties except for the 2nd
Amendment and private gun ownership).
 BP> There are plenty of people being convicted and imprisoned for
 BP> violating federal firearms laws that are direct violations of 2nd
 BP> Amendment rights.  Many of these people have raised the issue but
 BP> it hasn't done them any good.
This leaves the question of how well, if at all, was the 2nd
Amendment issue raised and litigated.  If it was raised, zealously
litigated, and attempted to be appealed all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court (which was NOT even done in the Miller case, or it
would likely have turned out better) and the court didn't accept
the case, this indicates that the 2nd Amendment was not wrongly
decided in the underlying suit.  This further suggests that the
cases in question involved only a desire to own firearms and not
a constitutional right to own firearms.  If this is the case, we
need to stop fooling ourselves that our interest is
constitutionally based and get behind political action and a
PR campaign to make guns "cool" and acceptable to as many
voters as possible.  But, the NRA keeps telling us that it
is seeking to protect our *2nd Amendment rights*, which can best
be protected in court, yet I don't see the reports of how it is
doing so -- even its participation in the "assault-weapons-ban"
suit is apparently on a non-2nd-Amendment basis (which makes it
no surprise that the NRA would have standing problems), and its
calls to *political* action are a concession that the "rights"
in question do not implicate the 2nd Amendment.
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