Arms Keepers

This organization got started in May 2009. We believe that an individual's right to keep and bear arms is constitutionally protected, by the Second Amendment in combination with the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Government can enact reasonable regulations on this subject, and citizens have no right to possess weapons for indiscriminate killing, but the government cannot disarm the American people. People have a right to use weapons to reasonably defend themselves, and to be of service in the event of civil emergencies.

We participated, as a friend of the court, in litigation that resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision incorporating the Second Amendment against the states. The case is McDonald v. Chicago, and the June 2010 SCOTUS decision in the case is here.

Justice Thomas gets credit for taking a serious look at a part of the Constitution that is all too often swept under the rug. And we can now say that the right to keep and bear arms would not now apply against the states but for the Privileges or Immunities (P or I) Clause.

Nevertheless, it is easy to see why parts of the Thomas opinion would have been allergic to Justice Scalia, Roberts, and Alito. Thomas strongly suggested that the P or I Clause protects unenumerated rights (and suggested that he might even overturn the very old judgment in the Slaughter House case). Our brief in this case disagreed with those suggestions in the Thomas opinion, and apparently Scalia, Roberts, and/or Alito disagree too.

All is not lost for the P or I Clause. Justice Alito said he wants some scholarly consensus before using it, so hopefully some scholarly consensus will be possible.

ARMS KEEPERS