This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 15, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

With a split now emerging among Federal Circuits,

the Second Amendment may be headed back to the US Supreme Court.

Robert A Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute and co-counsel in the case that overturned the

DC gun ban, discusses the cases.

The reason that we sued in Washington, D.C. was because Washington, D.C. is not a state.

It's a federal enclave. And so we were able to avoid the complicated issue of incorporation, that is the applicability of the Second Amendment

to the states, that left that issue to be litigated and indeed it is being litigated.

And three US courts of appeal

have now weighed in with their views as to whether or not

the Second Amendment is incorporated.

The Second Circuit, that's in New York in a case involving

Nunnchucks in the home for self-defense has decided that the Second Amendment is not incorporated.

The Seventh Circuit, in a consolidation of three cases,

one of which is called McDonald, another of which is filed by the NRA,

also decided that the Second Amendment is not incorporated.

The Ninth Circuit, however, in California in a case called

Nordike, has decided the other way and claims that the Second Amendment is

incorporated.

And that teased the issue up for the Supreme Court to step in and grant certiorari and resolve

this split between the circuits.

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