In what is almost certainly going to result in a showdown at the US Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals has incorporated the 2nd amendment into the 14th amendment. In simple terms this is the first time that the 2nd amendment has been applied to limit the actions of an individual state, in this case the county of Alameda in the state of California.

Without getting too complicated in legal mumbo jumbo, the Bill of Rights was originally considered to only apply to limit the actions of the federal government. When the 14th amendment was passed there was debate as to how much it incorporated, or extended the provisions of the BoR to the individual states.

Over the 150 years or so since the 14th was passed, a number of provisions, mostly the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments have been applied to the states, but not the 2nd. This could be a problem for many gun control laws and follows in the basic pattern of the Heller decision last year which applied the law to the District of Columbia.

Clearly this is going to be appealed. I’m somewhat surprised at the lack of media coverage so far (which explains the lack of a link to a major news source). It is worth noting that the three judge panel which issued the ruling consisted of a Carter, Clinton and Reagan appointee, so in theory 2 of them were Democrats.

The ruling can be found at http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/04/20/0715763.pdf