MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.
Lawyers attending The Missouri Bar conference won’t be the only visitors to St. Louis this week. “A who’s who” of gun rights leaders and activists will be in town for the 24th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference this weekend at the Airport Renaissance Grand.
Attorney Alan Gura, left, stands with Dick Heller, right, outside the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2008. Gura was the lead attorney in the gun possession case Columbia v. Heller, in which the court said the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to possess firearms. Photo by Brendan Smialowski, Bloomberg News
Among the speakers will be Alan Gura, of the Washington D.C. law firm Gura & Possessky, who successfully argued District of Columbia v. Heller before the U.S. Supreme Court. The opinion, issued in 2008, held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for private use. This was the first time the court addressed an individuals’ right to keep and bear arms.
Gura will be part of a panel session, “Building Upon the Heller Decision,” at 1:45 p.m. on Saturday. Also on the panel will be attorney Donald Kilmer, who argued the Nordyke v. King case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In that opinion, decided after Heller, the court determined that the Second Amendment applied to local and state governments.
The session will preview upcoming court cases dealing with Second Amendment issues including the Nordyke case, which is scheduled for a rehearing before the 9th Circuit en banc on Wednesday, said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
“We will also be discussing our case against Chicago’s gun ban which we believe the Supreme Court will grant [a writ of certiorari] to in the upcoming weeks,” he said.
The case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, involves the application of the Second Amendment to the states.
A panel discussion on “Guns and Tenth Amendment: Federalism in the 21st Century,” will follow the discussion on Heller at 2:45 p.m. Gottlieb said the panel will address recent laws in Montana and Tennessee which do not allow the federal government to regulate guns made and owned in the state because it does not involve interstate commerce.
Another panel will address potential appointments to the federal courts under President Barack Obama.
Also, scheduled to speak is Wayne LaPierre, National Rifle Association executive vice president; Tim Oliver, vice president for Missouri Concealed Carry; and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 2008. Barr will keynote the annual awards luncheon on Saturday.
The conference is free and open to the public. But attendants are being asked to pre-register on the conference’s Web site www.saf.org.
The conference, to be held Friday through Sunday, is sponsored by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the Second Amendment Foundation. For more information, contact the Second Amendment Foundation at 425-454-7012 or visit its Web site at www.saf.org. A full itinerary of the conference is scheduled to be posted on the Web site on Tuesday.
