Why is Supreme Court review now desirable?
There are several reasons why the time is ripe for Supreme Court review: (1) The upside potential exceeds the downside risk. Currently, federal appeals courts covering 47 states say there’s no Second Amendment recourse in federal court if state laws violate gun rights. Those decisions would no longer be good law if the Supreme Court affirmed Parker. On the other hand, 44 states have their own constitutional provisions protecting an individual right to bear arms. None of those laws rests on the Second Amendment, so they would be unaffected even if the Supreme Court reversed Parker. (2) A bad case will ultimately reach the Supreme Court if Parker does not. Criminal defense lawyers routinely challenge felon-in-possession and other gun charges on Second Amendment grounds. Sooner or later, one of those cases will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, with a murderer or drug dealer as the poster-boy for the Second Amendment instead of law-abiding citizens. (3) The D.C. Circuit’s Parker opinion i
