BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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 (http://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 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to
 better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
 
 
 
 

SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation