High Court to Take D.C. Gun Ban Case
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2007; 2:45 PM

The
Supreme Court announced today that it will decide whether the District
of Columbia's ban on handguns violates the Constitution, a choice that
will put the justices at the center of the controversy over the meaning
of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years.
The
court's decision could have broad implications for gun-control measures
locally and across the country and will raise a hotly contested
political issue just in time for the 2008 elections.
The court will likely hear the case in March, with a decision coming before
justices adjourn at the end of June.
For
years, legal scholars, historians and grammarians have debated the
meaning of the amendment because of its enigmatic wording and odd
punctuation:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear
Arms, shall not be infringed."
Gun rights proponents say the
words guarantee the right of an individual to possess firearms.
Gun-control supporters say it conveys only a civic or "collective"
right to own guns as part of service in an organized military
organization.
"For the first time in nearly 70 years, the Supreme
Court has agreed to examine the meaning of the Second Amendment," said
Robert A. Levy, the Cato Institute scholar who funded the lawsuit on
behalf of a group of District resident.
"That's good news for all
Americans who would like to be able to defend themselves where they
live and sleep. And it's especially good news for residents of
Washington, D.C., which has been the murder capital of the nation
despite an outright ban on all functional firearms since 1976."
District officials said they would have no reaction until a news conference this
afternoon.
The court's last examination of the amendment was in 1939, when it ruled in
United States v. Miller
that a sawed-off shotgun transported across state lines by a bootlegger
was not what the amendment's authors had in mind when they were
protecting arms needed for military service.
Since then, almost
all of the nation's courts of appeal have read the ruling to mean the
amendment conveys only a collective right to gun ownership. But the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit broke ranks last spring,
becoming the first to strike down a gun-control law on Second Amendment
grounds.
A panel of three Republican-appointed judges voted 2 to
1 that the amendment "protects an individual right to keep and bear
arms" and that "once it is determined -- as we have done -- that
handguns are 'Arms' referred to in the Second Amendment, it is not open
to the District to ban them."
The District law, enacted in 1976,
soon after the city won home rule, is one of the toughest in the
nation. It prohibits residents from registering and possessing handguns
in almost all circumstances. The District also requires that rifles and
other long guns kept in the home be unloaded and disassembled or
outfitted with trigger locks. The court struck down that law as well,
saying it rendered the right to possess such a weapon for self-defense
virtually useless.
The city and the challenging resident had
proposed competing constitutional questions for the court to consider.
Resident Dick A. Heller proposed the court decide "whether the Second
Amendment guarantees lawabiding, adult individuals a right to keep
ordinary, functional firearms, including handguns, in their homes."
The
city proposed "whether the Second Amendment forbids the District of
Columbia from banning private possession of handguns while allowing
possession of rifles and shotguns."
The court rewrote the
question to say it would decide whether the relevant provisions of the
city's law "violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are
not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep
handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes."
It
is unusual that both the losing party and the winners of that decision
asked the court to consider the case. But Levy has worked for years to
bring the matter to the Supreme Court.
He and others, including
co-counsel Clark M. Neily III and Alan Gura, assembled six D.C.
residents to challenge the District ban. Their idea was to present the
courts with law-abiding plaintiffs who wanted the weapons for
self-defense rather than people appealing criminal convictions for
possessing weapons.
A federal district judge ruled against the
residents, but the appeals court overturned that decision in a strongly
worded opinion written by conservative Senior Judge Laurence H.
Silberman.
The District argued in its petition to the Supreme
Court that the decision "drastically departs from the mainstream of
American jurisprudence."
The petition filed by D.C. Attorney
General Linda Singer said the appeals court was wrong for three
reasons: because it recognized an individual rather than a collective
right; because the Second Amendment serves as a restriction only on
federal interference with state-regulated militias and state-recognized
gun rights; and because the District is within its rights to protect
its citizens by banning a certain type of gun.
"It is eminently
reasonable to permit private ownership of other types of weapons,
including shotguns and rifles, but ban the easily concealed and
uniquely dangerous modern handgun," said the petition. "Whatever right
the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to
stand by while its citizens die."

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Jeff N. Cantwell
Contract Programmer
Downtown Little Rock, AR
ICQ #19444448
NRA Life, Member ARPA, Libertarian
[www.ARPA-Online.org]
NRA EVC - 2nd District




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