This is the Cator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

With one gun rights case now being considered by the Supreme Court, another case aims to give greater substance to the right to keep and bear arms.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Tom Palmer wants to have his right to not just keep but also bear arms in the District of Columbia. We spoke last week.

I had originally been one of the plaintiffs in the Heller case and that proceeded with six

plaintiffs because of an unusual

feature of what they call the standing rule in DC. DC had a very unusual

rule to be granted standing. Effect effectively had to have already been arrested

to be able to say that your constitutional rights were in danger.

And only one of the plaintiffs, according to the court,

met that standard because he had applied in writing for a permit and was denied

in writing.

Now I had also applied, but was not given a letter denying me a permit. The court ruled that well that triggered this

unusual standing rule so it proceeded on that basis and the court ruled that

they cannot say that reasonable restrictions on gun ownership, you can't have,

you know, mass murderers, convicted felons and so on owning guns, that reasonable restrictions could not be extended to encompass a total

ban, just an absolute prohibition.

And so they validated the right to keep arms, and that was essentially all that was being

requested in that particular case was to invalidate a law that forbade the

possession of functional firearms.

Now there are two additional steps though to get what we think the Second Amendment

requires, which is the right to keep and bear arms.

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