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TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/AP) Gun owners and defenders of the second amendment saw success during the 2014Floridalegislative session, but one battle is still being waged.

Major wins came in the form of the warning-shot bill which protects people from mandatory sentences when they threaten to use a weapon in self-defense and the pop-tart bill that keeps children from being punished for playing with imaginary guns or wearing clothing with images of firearms.

The biggest loss was legislation to extend carry and conceal privileges during a declared state of emergency. The bill was killed, in part, by a late push from theFloridaSheriffs Association.

Those who hoped to see changes in the stand your ground law were left empty-handed.

I told my constituents when I left to come to Tallahassee that the second amendment would be safe, said Sen. Greg Evers, R-Pensacola. I feel reasonably sure that we held true to that. In fact, we made some headway. The second amendment is definitely safe, so my folks back home are going to be happy.

Both Evers and Marion Hammer, a lobbyist and former NRA president, said the carry-and-conceal issue is not going away.

The sheriffs association argued that the language in the bill (SB 296) was too open-ended and left room for interpretation without time and place specifications. Hammer called that argument just a smoke screen.

It was never about anything other than their convenience and the fact they didnt want citizens carrying guns, Hammer said.

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Success For Gun Owners & 2nd Amendment Defenders In 2014

WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up a case over whether Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms in public.

It comes amid a rumbling and divisive debate between pro- and anti-gun lobbies after several high-profile shootings or massacres in recent years.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives citizens the right to bear arms, but states have enacted various laws governing gun ownership.

John Drake, who operates an ATM business, was challenging a strict New Jersey state law that requires people wanting to carry a handgun outside the home to demonstrate a "justifiable need."

Backed by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), Drake argued that his employees need to be able to defend themselves because they are carrying large sums of money.

The NRA said in its argument backing Drake: "The Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry weapons for the purpose of self-defence - not just for self-defence within the home, but for self-defence - period."

It added that the "right to bear arms for self-defence" was "as important outside the home as inside."

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess a gun at home for self-defence.

But in dismissing the complaint, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court of appeal decision stating that the New Jersey law is consistent with the Second Amendment.

It has declined to hear similar challenges to the concealed carry laws of New York and Maryland.

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US Supreme Court refuses to consider gun-rights case

Posted Mon, May 5th, 2014 12:00 pm by Lyle Denniston

Two areas of the law where the Supreme Court made major pronouncements, and then all but dropped the subject, continued on Monday to remain off the Courts decision docket. One wasthe intensifying controversy over Second Amendment rights; the other was the lingering controversy over the fate of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Without comment, the Court denied review of new cases, keeping intact a lengthening list of refusals.

Since the Courts 2008 decision declaring a personal right to have a gun under the Second Amendment, and its 2010 decision expanding that right nationwide, the Justices have steadfastly refused to say anything more about how far that right extends. And since its 2008 decision giving Guantanamo Bay detainees a right to go to court to protesttheir prolonged imprisonment, it has routinely denied pleasto spell out how that ruling should be applied.

The pattern continued on Monday, as the Justices without explanation and with no dissenting votes recorded chose not to take on the Second Amendment case of Drake v. Jerejian, or the Guantanamo case of Al Warafi v. Obama.

Only two explanations seem plausible: either the Court is content to let lower courts work out the details of gun rights and detention authority, or the Justices are hesitating to take on a new case because they are not sure how the votes will be cast on final decisions.

Probably the biggest question overhanging the Second Amendment is whether the right to have a gun for personal self-defense exists outside the home. Some courts have said yes, some have said no, and some have not been sure either way. That was the issue raised in the Drake case, seeking to test a New Jersey law that requires an individual who wants to carry a handgun in public to get a permit to do so; to obtain such a permit, one has to convince officials that the person has a justifiable need for that privilege.

There is a clear split among federal appeals courts on the outside-the-home issue. In the Drake case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found no Second Amendment violation with the handgun permit law.

Probably the biggest question overhanging Guantanamo Bay prisoners that is, those being held there who are not being prosecuted for any crimes is whether and how long they can be kept there if they did not actively engage in armed conflict against the U.S. or its allies before they were captured. Justice Stephen G. Breyer signaled in a recent opinion that this is an open question.

And that appeared to be the situation in the new Al Warafi case. He and his lawyers have insisted that he went to Afghanistan to act as a medical worker, in clinics and hospitals, and his stint with Taliban forces was only as a medical aide. His detention was upheld by lower courts, however, because he was found to have been a part of the Taliban terrorist network regardless whether he had engaged in armed hostilities himself.

Those denials came among a series of orders the Court issued before beginning a two-week recess. Here, in summary, were some of the other actions:

Read more from the original source:
Staying away from guns and Gitmo

While the media attention will focus on the Supreme Courts ruling inTown of Greece v. Galloway the legislative-prayer case the more interesting (and consequential) decision issued today was the Courts denial of review inDrake v. Jerejian, the Second Amendment case I previously discussed here. InDrake, the lower federal courts upheld an outrageous New Jersey law that denies the right to bear arms outside the home for self-defense just like the D.C. law at issue inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller denied the right to keep arms inside the home and today the Supreme Court let them get away with it.

Drake is but the latest in a series of cases that challenge the most restrictive state laws regarding the right to armed self-defense. Although the Supreme Court in Hellerdeclared that the Second Amendment protects an individual constitutional right, lower federal courts with jurisdiction over states like Maryland and New York have been willfully confused about the scope of that right, declining to protect it outsideHellers particular facts (a complete ban on functional firearms in the home).Its as if the Supreme Court announced that the First Amendment protects an individual right to blog about politics from your home computer, but then some lower courts allowed states to ban political blogging from your local Starbucks.

Yet each time, the Supreme Court has denied review.

New Jerseys is perhaps the most egregious restriction. In the Garden State, local law enforcement officials have full discretion to grant or deny a license to carry a firearm, which they may issue only if the applicant can prove a justifiable need (which in practice means aspecific, immediate threat to ones safety that cant be avoided in any way other than through possession of a handgun). Then, even if a local police chiefapproves a carry permit, the application goes to a judge for a hearing, during which the local prosecutor can oppose the permit. And even if the would-be gun-owner can successfully run that gauntlet, she gets a permit for two years, at which point she must repeat the entire process.

The dual review by two different branches of government is unusually burdensome, to say the least, and distinguishes New Jerseys approach in addition to the extreme definition of justifiable need from every other permitting regime in the country.Can you imagine the exercise of any other constitutional right being handled this way?

The effect of this regulatory scheme is that virtually nobody in New Jersey can use a handgun to defend themselves outside their home. The state law inverts how fundamental rights are supposed to work that the government must justify restrictions, not the right-holder the exercise and apparently the Supreme Court has no problem with that.

The lower court in Drakeapplied a deferential review far from the heightened scrutiny normally due an individual right enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It also assumed the legislatures good faith without requiring the state to show any evidence that a prohibitive-carry regime lowers the rate of gun crime, and excused what constitutional infringements the law causes because legislators acted beforeHellerclarified that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. To continue my previous analogy, its like a state law banning political blogging survived judicial review because the definitive Supreme Court ruling finding an individual right to political blogging didnt come down till after the state law was enacted.

What kind of a bizarro world are we living in where this is ok?

In Catos amicus brief inDrake, we posed an alternate question presented (legalese for the issue that a brief asks a court to resolve):

Was this Court serious in District of Columbia v. Heller when it ruled that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms?

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Supreme Court Wasnt Serious about the Second Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court left intact a New Jersey law that requires a justifiable need to carry a handgun in public, sidestepping a dispute over the scope of the Constitutions gun-rights protections.

The justices today turned away an appeal by four New Jersey residents and two organizations, which said the Constitutions Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry a weapon for self-defense. A federal appeals court upheld the New Jersey measure.

The high court hasnt take up a gun-rights case since 2010, repeatedly rejecting appeals centering on the Second Amendments reach outside the home.

New Jersey is one of seven states that require an applicant to show a special need to get a permit to carry a handgun. That group includes California, whose rules are now before a federal appeals court, and New York, whose law the justices left intact a year ago.

The Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry weapons for the purpose of self-defense -- not just for self-defense within the home but for self-defense, period, the National Rifle Association argued in a brief backing the appeal.

Many states have relaxed their public-possession restrictions in recent years. In 1981, just three states -- Maine, Washington and Vermont -- let typical residents carry firearms in public without giving a reason.

In upholding the New Jersey law on a 2-1 vote, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the measure was valid even if the Second Amendment applies outside the home. The appeals court pointed to a passage in a 2008 Supreme Court decision that said some longstanding gun restrictions were presumptively lawful.

The panel said New Jersey has had the justifiable need standard in some form since 1924.

New Jerseys legislature, long ago, made the predictive judgment that widespread carrying of handguns in public would not be consistent with public safety because of the inherent danger it poses, New Jersey officials, led by Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman, argued in court papers that urged the court to reject the appeal.

The Second Amendment Foundation and the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs joined the four residents in challenging the measure. The residents were led by John Drake, who says he was denied a permit even though he operates a business that stocks ATM machines and often must carry large amounts of cash.

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New Jersey Gun-Carrying Limit Left Intact by High Court