Matt Lewis, among others, noted that John McCain joined a rather extraordinary amicus brief on District of Columbia v. Heller. It is rather extraordinary for a couple of reasons. First, it is extraordinary in its conclusion:
In sum, historically Congress has interpreted the Second Amendment as recognizing the right of law-abiding individuals to keep and bear arms. This Court should give due deference to the repeated findings over different historical epochs by Congress, a co-equal branch of government, that the Amendment guarantees the personal right to possess firearms.
The District’s prohibitions on mere possession by law-abiding persons of handguns in the home and having usable firearms there are unreasonable per se. No purpose would be served by remanding this case for further fact finding or other proceedings. This Court should affirm the decision below, Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007).
That in itself is a rather stunning and refreshing change from the official position of the executive branch, which in essence is that, while there is an individual Second Amendment right, all existing gun controls, including the DC gun ban, do not run afoul of that.
The second is who else joined this brief. At the top is Vice President Dick Cheney, who joined in his capacity as President of the Senate. I guess that blows the notion of him actually running the country out of the water. There are also a smattering of Democrats, some of whom I would never have guessed would say that an outright ban on handguns is unreasonable.
Specifically, those in the Wisconsin delegation that signed on are Senator Russ Feingold and Representatives Steve Kagen, Ron Kind, Tom Petri, Paul Ryan and Jim Sensenbrenner (the latter 3 I would expect as they are what remains of the Republican half of the delegation).
Hey Doyle. Hey Decker. You mopes listening?
