BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) have joined with the Madison Society and a dozen law professors from major universities in filing a Brandeis brief in a Washington, D.C. case that has significant implications on the individual right to keep and bear arms.
The case, Shelly Parker et al v. District of Columbia could result in a landmark ruling on the meaning and authority of the Second Amendment.
SAF founder and CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb said the Parker case has the potential of bringing the Second Amendment “clearly, and unmistakably into focus as an individual civil right.”
In their brief, SAF, CCRKBA and their partners noted that the Parker case challenges “the quasi-religious faith” that believes more firearms will result in more violent crime. Instead, they argue that there is ample research which shows “nations with more gun ownership generally have lower violent crime and murder rates than nations that forbid guns.”
The brief further notes that handgun prohibitions, like the one now in effect in the capitol, “invariably fail to reduce violence.” In the five years prior to enactment of the District’s handgun ban, the murder rate fell, but in the five years after the ban took effect, the murder rate went back up. In the ensuing decades, the District’s murder rate “has been the highest in America excepting the few years when it came in second or third.”
The brief cites two recent gun law surveys, by the National Academy of Sciences and by the Centers for Disease Control, which both admitted they could find no gun control measure that had reduced violent crime, gun accidents or suicides.
“The Parker case challenges the political correctness of a gun ban to its core,” Gottlieb stated. “We believe this case will demonstrate that a civil right is not subject to the political whim of any municipal government, and that the Bill of Rights may not be suspended at the city limits.”
Joining the Organization Amici were George Mason University law professors Lloyd Cohen, Michael Krauss and Dean Daniel Polsby; and Professors Nicholas Johnson, Fordham University; David Mayer, Capital University; Leonard Nelson, Samford University; Joseph Olson, Hamline University; Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee; William Schroeder, Southern Illinois University; Robert Turner, University of Virginia; and Andrew Morris and Dale Nance, Case Western Reserve University.