Supreme Court Readies Ruling

Arlington, VA — The 60 Plus Association, filing a friend of the court brief allowing individuals the right to keep and bear arms, said it was “cautiously optimistic” that the U.S. Supreme Court would grant that right. The Court is expected to rule sometime in late June in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

60 Plus, on behalf of senior citizens all across the country, joined the Southeastern Legal Foundation, Inc. in filing an amicus brief in the Supreme Court’s hearing of Heller. At the time, 60 Plus President Jim Martin said, “We have always held to the 2nd Amendment’s intrinsic right for self-defense. And in my role as President of this national seniors’ association, it strikes me as vital that the elderly, in Washington, DC or anywhere else have the right to self-defense afforded by legal ownership of a hand gun.”

In 1976, the District banned firearms; it barred possession of handguns and required that rifles and shotguns in the home be unloaded and either disassembled or disabled via trigger locks. “What nonsense! I can hear an elderly man or woman now, while being burglarized, saying to the offender, “can you please wait while I assemble my rifle to prevent you from doing me harm?,” Martin asked. “Chief Justice John Roberts echoed similar sentiments when he scoffed at the idea that a citizen awakened by an intruder in the middle of the night could ‘turn on the lamp, pick up reading glasses’ and disengage a trigger lock.

“It should come as no surprise the individuals that really benefited by the District’s over-reaching gun control advocacy were the criminals…the bad guys…the plunderers who couldn’t care less about gun restrictions and used them freely to punish the innocent,” Martin concluded.

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