Well, considering that the court could have decided that a "child" of 17 could exercise his 2nd Amendment rights under parental supervision, even under the "strict scrutiny" standard, I'm not going to lose sleep over it yet.
If this 17 year old had requested to use or posses a gun, his parents turned them down, and he was then caught, I don't know.. at a gun range or something, perhaps only caught because he was using the firearm for legitimate self-defense,
then he'd have some further standing to test 2nd Amendment rights vs. parental rights to supervise and control their young.
Also, I can't imagine that any judge would be 100% unbiased to only consider the "constitutional issues" and not consider the totality of the circumstances.
Christopher Sieyes was arrested in April 2007 on the Kitsap peninsula, west of Seattle, in April 2007 when he was a passenger in a car stopped for speeding. A deputy sheriff saw Sieyes reach for something on the floorboard of the car; after the youth had left the vehicle, the officer found the handgun under the seat. He was found guilty of second-degree firearms possession. He was sentenced to ten days in juvenile detention, one year of supervision, thirty hours of community service, and a $100 fine.
Call me a hypocrite, and I'll gladly own it. Even as a little-l Libertarian, I'd be perfectly happy with some sort of double-standard that the 17 year old out hunting, or plinking in the countryside be left alone while the 17 year old cruising downtown with his friends still be a situation where the police can intervene.
Micro, I know it irritates you that the judges keep skirting the scrutiny standard for Heller applications, but if I HAVE to choose between judicial activism and judicial restraint, I'll take the judicial restraint any day of the week. Generally speaking, while a lack of activism worked against us in terms or RKBA
this time, judicial activism is generally used/abused to do end-runs around the legislature and is generally deleterious to the separation of powers.
If they were to override the state's laws on firearm possession by those under 18 (and as such undermine the legislative branch) then it potentially opens not just a can of worms, but a whole case of cans... Things like "Do children have 4th Amendment protections of their privacy against their parents?", while that might seem like an excellent idea to a libertarian absolutist, I assure you, the bureaucracy that would spring up to enforce those rights would be a nightmare.
IMO it's a wise court that balances the issue of individual rights against eroding the separation of powers which can have disastrous effects for all.
