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Background:
Last year the Supreme Court ruled that Washington DC - in key respects an arm of the federal government - is subject to previously unrecognized limits on its ability to regulate handguns. One aspect of the case was a conclusion that the Second Amendment recognizes an "individual" right to bear arms: that language is not strictly about state militias.
Now gun advocates are back at SCOTUS asking it to overturn gun laws in Illinois. The earlier case was about just what "right to bear arms" means. This case is about whether that right limits only the federal government or also each state.
The gun advocates argue that a state - that is, the elected government of the state, reflecting a majority of the voters - is blocked by the federal Constitution from imposing gun laws except in serious, not-yet-defined circumstances. (Age limits? That's for another case.)
Irony:
The gun advocates are very specifically arguing against state sovereignty here. I heard one advocate explicitly state, "The civil war and the 14th Amendment mean that states do not have the power to make these choices."
That's the legal argument, all right. The 14th Amendment, through "equal protection" and "due process" guarantees to individuals, means that states must accept those same limits that some of the provisions in the Bill of Rights put on the US itself. The case is about whether the Second Amendment is one of those provisions that should be "incorporated" into a limit on state power.
Libertarians - it seems to me - should be conflicted here.
The gun advocates are relying on remote federal power to trump the power of their neighbors to make law.
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