SCOTUS to Weigh in On D.C. Gun Ban
20 November 2007 2:00 pm by Taylor Marsh
SCOTUS to Weigh in On D.C. Gun Ban bumped (from 12:30 pm)
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After a hiatus of 68 years, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to rule on
the meaning of the Second Amendment — the hotly contested part of the
Constitution that guarantees “a right to keep and bear arms.”
Not since 1939 has the Court heard a case directly testing the Amendment’s
scope — and there is a debate about whether it actually decided anything
in that earlier ruling. In a sense, the Court may well be writing on a clean
slate if, in the end, it decides the ultimate question: does the Second Amendment
guarantee an individual right to have a gun for private use, or does it only
guarantee a collective right to have guns in an organized military force such
as a state National Guard unit? … ..
If you’re interested in this case as I am, as a gun owner, please read the
full analysis. This is especially interesting:
One of the interesting subsets of the question the Court will be confronting
is whether the 1939 case of U.S. v. Miller is a precedent for what the Second
Amendment means — individual or collective right. If that decision did
find in favor of a collective right, the current Court would have to decide
whether this was a binding precedent, or whether it should be overruled. Chief
Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has already taken a stand on that question.
At his nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said that
“the Miller case sidestepped” the issue of whether the Amendment
protected a collective or an individual right. He added: “An argument
was made back in 1939 that this provides only a collective right, and the
Court didn’t address that….So people try to read into the tea
leaves about Miller and what would come out on this issue, but that’s
still very much an open issue.”The Heller case has been discussed widely as a sweeping ban on private possession
or use of handguns. But the Court order granting review took it a step further:
the one section that will be at issue that goes beyond handguns is the provision
that requires that any gun kept at home be unloaded and disassembled, or at
least be locked. Thus, that provision also applies to rifles and shotguns
kept at home, in terms of whether those weapons would remain “functional”
in time of emergency if that provision were upheld. That part of the order
appeared to widen the inquiry in a way that the local residents who challenged
the law had wanted. …
AdamB
has more on this major decision to weigh in on this important Second Amendment
case.
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.
I’ve written a lot about D.C.’s
stupid gun laws, including when Jim
Webb got embroiled
in the issue earlier this year. Regular readers know that my husband is
a gun expert
and helped me prove Dick
Cheney was closer
to his friend than alleged when he shot him in the face. My husband also
has the dubious distinction of having almost died from being shot while on duty
as a gas technician, which happened before I met him, and still carries a bullet
in his gut. I encouraged him to get a concealed carry for his late night work (beyond the gas company) as well. We are considering moving to D.C., though there are other cities we’re
considering as well. I can’t imagine my husband and I not being able to have
handguns in our house. (A shotgun is not the weapon for me.) We’d have to live
in Virginia. Nothing wrong in that, obviously, because Virginia is gorgeous,
mind you, but you catch my drift.
Arguments will begin in early spring and a decision will be handed down in
June 2008.
