All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

One question left unanswered by the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Second Amendment ruling last year is this: When do law-abiding Americans have the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense?

In a lawsuit filed against the city of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation aims to find out.

The plaintiffs are four gun owners who were denied licenses to carry firearms in public on their person, which nearly all states permit. All U.S. states except Illinois and Wisconsin grant licenses for concealed carry, and 36 states require local police to issue the licenses unless there's a valid reason (such as a criminal history) not to do so.

The District of Columbia is a special case. Its city code says nobody may carry "either openly or concealed on or about their person, a pistol, without a license." But a law enacted in December 2008 appears to have curbed the ability of the police chief to grant those licenses.

"This really isn't about concealed carry," Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, told CBSNews.com in an interview on Thursday evening. "It's about being able to carry a gun, period. D.C. can prescribe some form or fashion or regulation or restrictions, but there's no way they can say you can't do it at all."

Part of the blame for this uncertainty -- how far does the Second Amendment extend? -- can be laid at the doors of no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court.

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This afternoon's pro-gun vote in the U.S. House of Representatives wasn't supposed to happen.

Ever since it looked like a Democrat had a good shot at the White House, gun rights groups have been loading for bear. One example: Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman published a book last year titled These Dogs Don't Hunt: The Democrats' War On Guns, which wondered if it's "something Democrats drink that causes them to climb aboard the Gun Control Express."

Candidate Barack Obama's record on the Second Amendment was anything but supportive; he appears to have once endorsed a complete ban on handgun possession, though aides claimed someone else filled out the survey. Other prominent Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Henry Waxman, and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, seemed equally enthusiastic about new restrictions targeting law-abiding gun owners.

So what persuaded a sizable majority of the House and Senate to vote for a bill lauding the "the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens?" (Part of the credit card-related legislation that the House approved today by a 249-147 vote repeals a ban on carrying weapons on federal lands.)

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In theory, law-abiding Californians who undergo a criminal background check and pass a government training course can receive a permit from their local sheriff to carry a concealed firearm.

But in practice, many California counties flatly deny permits to residents who meet the requirements for a concealed carry permit -- a situation that a lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento on Tuesday hopes to remedy.

The lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Calguns Foundation says the routine denials of concealed carry permits violate the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

One of the plaintiffs is Deanna Sykes, a lesbian and a firearms instructor who says she believes her sexual orientation and small stature make her a target for criminals. Another is Andrew Witham, a private investigator and campus public safety officer, whose local sheriff denied his request to carry a handgun while away from work.

The case "presents a very simple legal issue: people have the right to bear arms," Alan Gura, a Virginia attorney representing the plaintiffs, told CBSNews.com on Wednesday. "The state is able to regulate that right, but it cannot arbitrarily deny the right to bear arms based on the whims of local officials. The current law has absolutely no standards to it, and some local officials regrettably abuse their discretion. They decide self-defense is not a valid reason to deny the gun carry permit."

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