Heads up Arizona; two critically important gun-related issues are working their way through the United States court system. The issues are: "incorporation" and firearms registration. Here's an overview of both:

        Last year's decision in DC v Heller established that individual citizens have a right to keep and bear arms independent of military service. However, until there's a final ruling in a separate case called Nordyke v King, the Heller ruling presently applies only to the District of Columbia. In its coming term, the Supreme Court will probably decide whether the right to bear arms is binding for the entire country. At present, there are several suits that address this issue (called Incorporation). We hope that, 1) the court chooses to hear one of the cases and, 2) if so, it decides that the right to keep and bear arms applies nationwide.

        There's little that individuals can do to influence the Supreme Court's decision on whether to accept a particular case. If it hears an incorporation case, our family will donate to a friend-of-the-court brief by some knowledgeable pro-incorporation group. We'll let website visitors know who's preparing such briefs for the Court. If you want to learn about the legal issues involved in incorporation, we recommend visiting attorney David Hardy's website "Of Arms and the Law" (see the LINK Section for contact information). Because events are breaking rapidly on incorporation, one needs to visit his website often.

        Readers should be aware of two ongoing court cases that address gun registration. The first case is new (filed two months ago at this writing) and deals with an extension of last year's Heller decision. The second is over three years old and involves a Cicero Illinois complaint against businessman John Justice for not registering several firearms. Let's look at both cases beginning with the Heller follow-on.

        After the 2008 Heller decision, the District of Columbia didn't comply with the spirit of the Supreme Court's ruling; if fact it did just the opposite. DC set up an overly complex, in-your-face (the Latin is merda pullus) set of requirements to have a firearm. A suit was brought to ease these requirements but it does much more than that! The suit contends that the"(District's) registration ---- requirements violate the 2nd Amendment," that is, requiring registration of commonly owned firearms is unconstitutional. If the suit is successful, the complexity of gun registration in the District will drop to zero. Further, if incorporation of the 2nd Amendment into state law also occurs, there will be no firearms registration in the United States. Thus an important suit to prohibit firearms registration is in its beginning phase. To learn more about this case, click on "Heller 2 v DC" on Dr Stephen Halbrook's home page. His website is listed in our LINKS Section.

        A more mature case against gun registration involves John Justice. In February of 2006, representatives of the Town of Cicero searched his adhesives manufacturing facility based on business related issues. Cicero is a suburb of Chicago that allows firearms ownership but has an ordinance requiring guns to be registered plus an annual fee of $70.00 for each gun. Several guns were discovered and Mr Justice was cited for having unregistered weapons. He subsequently filed a civil suit against Cicero based, in part, on 2nd Amendment grounds. The case has worked its way through the court system and on 14 August, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that requiring firearms registration is constitutional. The decision claimed that registration is acceptable even if the 2nd Amendment is incorporated against the states as discussed earlier. Mr Justice is in the process of crafting his response.

        The Obama administration may view this Seventh Circuit decision as a green light for enacting a nationwide gun registration law. An easy way for progressives to implement firearms registration is for the federal government to retain data submitted in all future "instant check" (NICS) requests. To do this, portions of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 would have to be repealed. We believe there would be broad bipartisan resistance to this but we live in strange political times. A plus is that one of the ongoing gun registration cases may result in the Supreme Court ruling that firearms registration is unconstitutional. Arizona Gun Talk will report on both incorporation and gun registration issues - history shows that firearms registration is the gateway to confiscation.