Hamblen v US

"The Court concludes that Petitioner [Hamblen] has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right as to his Second Amendment claim, and reasonable jurists could find the Court's assessment of the constitutional claim debatable…Accordingly, the Court will issue a certificate of appealability on Petitioner's Second Amendment claim."--Judge Todd Campbell, U.S. Court for the Middle District Of Tennessee, Richard Hamblen vs. United States, No. 3:08-1034, December 5, 2008

The case involves possession of a machine gun by a member of a state-organized militia. Mr. Hamblen has approached me to call it to your attention.

I advised:

Suggestion: Start a free blog to be a central repository for information you want the public to know about. Go to another free service like esnips.com to post pdf and Word docs that can then be linked to--I can't post this memorandum in full anywhere, so if it were stored on a free server, I could give a summary statement and then send people there to read and download it for themselves. A guy like me can direct people to sources of information, but I can't take point on it.

Suggest you also publicize contact info, and if you're requesting people to do something, be specific about it. Also, if you have links to any news accounts, that would be helpful.

For now, you can learn more about his case from The Volokh Conspiracy (which has posted Judge Campbell's Memorandum) and from Of Arms and the Law.

I'll try to keep tabs on this as relevant developments happen.