June 27, 2008
Midnight Movie: Supreme Court's Decision on Guns & How it Effects California
Immediately after the Supreme Court's Thursday ruling allowing citizens to own handguns, gun advocates began to talk lawsuits against cities that have restrictions.
As for California, which ranks highest in the country for gun restrictions laws, cities will become targets for lawsuits. "California laws that gun rights groups plan to scrutinize include the state's ban on assault weapons, the permitting process for carrying a concealed weapon in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and restrictions in Los Angeles on gun retailers," reports the LA Times.



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That makes three very bad decisions in the last few days. This one will make the gun manufacturers, and gun dealers happy.
In two other very bad decisions the right wad stacked US Supreme Court gutted the Exxon Valdez settlement to 1/10th the original judgement, and handed murderers in domestic violence cases a new and novel way to avoid justice.
The Exxon Valdez settlement was ruled "excessive". (5-3, Alito recusing himself because he owns Exxon stock.)
The USSC also ruled that in domestic violence murder cases, police reports of previous violence should now be omitted as evidence against the perpetrator because, after all, how can the accused confront his a accuser if the accuser is dead. (I shit you not!) 6-3 on that one.
As you might have guessed these decisions were split pretty much along right/left ideological lines.
For the people who are still bitter about Hillary Clinton not getting the Dem nom, and are talking about staying home on election day, or worse yet voting for McCain so Hillary will have a better chance in 2012, you may want to consider a future full of more bad decisions like these.
We're looking at two possibly three new USSC appointments in the next Presidential term. If McCain is the one making them you can be sure The USSC will be stacked even further to the right than it is now.
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There's a good OP-ED about this by Erwin Chemerinski in today's Times...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chemerinsky27-2008jun27,0,1691470.story