SAF EXCITED ABOUT SUPREME COURT REVIEW OF HELLER CASE

For Immediate Release:   11/20/2007

BELLEVUE, WA – For the first time in United States history, the Supreme Court will hear a case that should, once and for all, decide the meaning of the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment Foundation could not be happier.

“We are confident that the high court will rule that the Second Amendment affirms and protects an individual civil right to keep and bear arms,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “Previous Supreme Court rulings dating back more than a century have consistently referred to the Second Amendment as protective of an individual right, but the case of District of Columbia v. Heller focuses on that issue, and we expect the court to settle the issue once and for all.”

The court announced today that it will hear an appeal of the case, in which seven Washington, D.C. residents have sued to overturn the district’s 31-year-old gun ban. In March, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the ban is unconstitutional because it violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The court further ruled that the amendment does protect an individual right. The ruling set off a firestorm, in which gun control proponents, who had frequently claimed to support a right to keep and bear arms, dropped all pretenses and publicly acknowledged that they do not believe there is such a right protected by the Second Amendment.

“An affirmative ruling by the Supreme Court will probably not be the death knell for the extremist citizen disarmament movement,” Gottlieb said, “but it will properly cripple their campaign to destroy an important civil right, the one that protects all of our other rights. The insidious effort to strip American citizens of their firearms rights, while at the same time permanently harming public safety must end.

“The Washington, D.C. gun ban has been a monumental failure and the crime statistics prove that,” Gottlieb said. “For almost 70 years, gun banners have deliberately misinterpreted and misrepresented the high court’s language in the U.S. v Miller ruling in 1939. It is long past the time that this important issue be put to rest, and the Heller case will provide the court with that opportunity.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and an amicus brief and fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.

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