Final amicus curiae briefs in support of the respondents in McDonald v. Chicago were due today. Among the parties filing are the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, a Joyce Foundation beneficiary, and a coalition of “public health” organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Both briefs take the argument that the 2nd Amendment should not be incorporated, as it would endanger gun control as a public health policy.
Equally ludicrous, but less insolent than the Chicago brief, is the one filed [pdf] by the United States Conference of Mayors. These folks were an endorser of the controversial and impotent group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and they claim that “the Second Amendment protects a largely obsolete Eighteenth-Century right.” They point to New York City’s “stop-and-frisk” program of detaining people suspected of carrying concealed weapons as one practice that may be endangered by incorporation.
Accordingly, if applicable to state and local governments and confined to framing-era understandings, the eighteenth-century conception of the right to bear arms would imperil the use of stop-and-frisk tactics against drug dealers and gang members, at least as long as they carry firearms openly and have not been previously convicted of a felony or otherwise fall within the scope of the regulatory authority acknowledged in Heller.
Continued...