Supreme Court Shoots Down D.C. Gun Ban
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "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."
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.
"Gun rights advocates now have a fully recognized individual right to bear arms. But gun control advocates now have a Supreme Court ruling that declares that this right, like other rights in the Constitution, is not absolute. So we finally get some clarity in an area of the law that was begging for it," writes CBS News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.
In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."
He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."
Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.
Gun rights supporters hailed the decision. "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
Cohen cautions that the ruling will not "immediately end all gun control regulation around the country. Jurisdictions that want to control guns - especially outside the home - still will be able to do so in some fashion."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress, criticized the ruling. "I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it," she said.
The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest.
Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection in the same Capitol Hill neighborhood as the court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.
The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.
Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."
In a concluding paragraph to the his 64-page opinion, Scalia said the justices in the majority "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country" and believe the Constitution "leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns."
The law adopted by Washington's city council in 1976 bars residents from owning handguns unless they had one before the law took effect. Shotguns and rifles may be kept in homes, if they are registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.
Opponents of the law have said it prevents residents from defending themselves. The Washington government says no one would be prosecuted for a gun law violation in cases of self-defense.
The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that case means but agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.
Forty-four state constitutions contain some form of gun rights, which are not affected by the court's consideration of Washington's restrictions.
The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290.
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "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."
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.
"Gun rights advocates now have a fully recognized individual right to bear arms. But gun control advocates now have a Supreme Court ruling that declares that this right, like other rights in the Constitution, is not absolute. So we finally get some clarity in an area of the law that was begging for it," writes CBS News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.
In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."
He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."
Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.
Gun rights supporters hailed the decision. "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
Cohen cautions that the ruling will not "immediately end all gun control regulation around the country. Jurisdictions that want to control guns - especially outside the home - still will be able to do so in some fashion."
The NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several of its suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome.
Read Andrew Cohen's CourtWatch column on Thursday's ruling.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress, criticized the ruling. "I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it," she said.
The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest.
Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection in the same Capitol Hill neighborhood as the court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.
The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.
Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."
In a concluding paragraph to the his 64-page opinion, Scalia said the justices in the majority "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country" and believe the Constitution "leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns."
The law adopted by Washington's city council in 1976 bars residents from owning handguns unless they had one before the law took effect. Shotguns and rifles may be kept in homes, if they are registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.
Opponents of the law have said it prevents residents from defending themselves. The Washington government says no one would be prosecuted for a gun law violation in cases of self-defense.
The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that case means but agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.
Forty-four state constitutions contain some form of gun rights, which are not affected by the court's consideration of Washington's restrictions.
The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290.
The recent Heller decision affirms the private right of the people to keep and bear arms. Though nobody has noticed it yet, the Heller opinion also specifically reaffirms the previous Miller decision. This states that militia utility makes possession of certain firearms legal.
So this splits the second amendment into two parts, providing two independent constitutional bases for future gun litigation.
E.g., Scalia clearly states that "Heller" does not encompass such military weapons as the M16 or short-barrelled shotguns. However, he strongly hints that these are encompassed under "Miller". Wait until the firearms prohibitionists figure this one out.
The following are two examples of people who would have died, in the liberal vision of America, w/o their 2nd Amendment right to self defense.
www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080214_lj_hawes.bfc57dff.html
www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7886169
Did anyone think a SC with common sense (ie: one NOT considering our Constitution as a ''living, breathing, interpret it on the whim-of-the-moment'' document) was going to deny the 2nd Amendment right of these law abiding citizens to defend their lives with a firearm when set upon by criminals ?
But in validating the lower courts ruling I hope their opinions also clarify/re-affirm that the Federal government does have the right to regulate the types of firearms that may be possessed. And, as a law-abiding gun owner, I would like to see the access to both firearms and ammunition by criminals and the mentally unstable minimized.
(cont)
Personally, I''d like to see the Firearm part of the ATF take on some responsibilities that are similar to the Center of Disease Control (CDC). In the latter case, when someone contracts a population threatening disease (eg: tuberculoses), the CDC is, by law, notified by medical practitioners then acts A.R. to prevent the spread to the rest of the population. So, for the ATF, this would mean that :
** Medical practitioners would be required, by law, to report mentally unstable patients to the ATF in every case that they are deemed a threat to themselves or their family or the general population.
** The Armed services would be required, by law, to report any discharge from the service for serious mental problems.
Similarly, given the youth of many of these perps, a special case needs to be made wrt juvenile criminal records, specifically:
** Juvenile violent offenses would, by law, be reported to the ATF, and considered by the ATF until the age of 25, after which those records would be purged, unless those individuals developed an adult rap sheet involving more violent offenses by age 25.
THEN, the ATF, firearm dealers and gun show promoters would need to modernize their equipment such that both firearm and ammunition purchases are vetted by the ATF, online, w/128 bit encryption (ie: same security as CC purchases).
(cont)
And for those conservatives worried about the ATF tracking ammunition purchases, every purchasers name/address could be submitted by the gun shops computer along with a pool of randomly picked local state residents, with the ATF computer on the other end quickly (less that 1 second) providing an electronic thumbs up/down for all of them, then the gun shops computer would filter out all but the intended buyer. If the ATF were to track in this scenario then it would appear, over time, that 100% of the states adult residents are purchasing ammunition.
Since we give medical data to the CDC to protect the general populace I do not think it is as big stretch to give similar data to the ATF to, again, protect the general populace.
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Additionally, the ATF needs to set national standards within which the state governments can restrict the parameters of firearm ownership AND interstate transportation for travel/vacation purposes.
** The former: To avoid DC-like scenarios, where self defense becomes a non-option. For example, states which wish to minimize clip capacity would have the single option of 10 rounds, nothing else. And truly self-defense threatening restrictions, like requiring a firearm to be disassembled and scattered into 4 corners of a house in individually locked
containers, or requiring a special tool to change a clip, like in CA, would be illegal per Federal law.
(cont)
** The latter: To avoid the imbecilic hodge-podge of different state firearm transportation rules across the US.
But this only addresses part of the problem. Some other aspects are that :
** In certain states, liberals encourage illegal immigration and, by default, the illegal documentation industries that enable the former, and therefore the ''drivers license as ID'' for gun/ammunition purchases, as vetted in such an ATF system/responsibility upgrade as outlined above, would be much less robust. For this reason, National ID or similar protocols may be required.
** In certain states, human life has become too cheap. For example, the rap sheet of the perp Arthur Mann, who got life (2-28-08) in GA for shooting his ex-girlfriend, in public, shows that he was previously released after serving only FOUR years of a pathetic 10yr sentence for a prior murder in FL.
www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/06/shooter.suspect/index.html?iref=newssearch
I do not know if this is due to the liberal anthem of the ''perp is the victim'', or neocons who are too cheap to push for execution-or-life incarceration for murder, or maybe both, but FOUR years for murder ??
And even when these murderers are condemned to life in prison, what are they faced with ?
(cont)
A lifetime of :
__free medical care,
__free food
__bed with fresh linen
__air conditioning and heat
__exercise, and
__reading materials.
All at taxpayer expense.
Wow.
I bet Arthur Mann was in that GA courtroom, just begging for the death penalty.
(As a side note, why is it OK to use DNA evidence to free a death row inmate, but not OK to use DNA evidence to put someone on death row ? And if DNA evidence can accelerate someone off death row quickly (and rightly so), why couldnt it also accelerate their execution, especially when multiple witness to the crime are also involved ? ).
** In certain states, conservatives have implemented what are known as Project Exile laws (eg: VA). Specifically, felons are already prohibited by Federal law from possessing firearms (which, of course, does not prevent them from doing so when they leave prison, eg: Arthur Mann), but, with Project Exile, a felon even being caught jaywalking while in possession of a firearm will result in a 5yr incarceration w/o parole. This should be made into a Federal law applicable to all states, whether the sates want it or not, but it would have to be prosecuted in Federal courts to not financially burden states.
=======================
(cont)
This would still leave states to restrict citizen carry laws off their property, outside of their autos, as the state sees fit. Keep in mind though, that still would leave the looney left entities to make their childish gun laws, like requiring law abiding gun owners to transport their firearms outside their homes in a locked container with the word ''GUN'' in big white letters on the case (eg: Boulder, CO, Jan 17, 2001). Presumably this was so that their non-gun owning neighbors could be alerted to such a heinous threat so that they could start running around their home interiors, in circular desperation, hands flailing in the air, shrieking, until their law abiding but obviously evil gun-owning neighbor drove out of sight.
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Otherwise, I have seen prior posts mentioning 30,000 US citizens killed by guns every year. This is true, for 2004, but only to the extent that well over half of them are suicides. Liberals would have you believe that this group of suicide-by-gun individuals posses a unique genetic trait, such that if they do not have a gun then they will not commit suicide, EVER. Here is the actual CDC US mortality data for 2004:
By gun:
Suicide ........- 16,750
Homicide .......- 11,624
Accident .......- 649
Undetermined ...- 235
By other than gun:
Suicide ........- 15,689
Homicide .......- 5,733
Accidents ......- 111,363
(cont)
By Accident other than gun:
Auto/Truck/etc .- 48,053
Falls ..........- 18,807
Drowning .......- 3,308
Fire/Smoke .....- 3,229
Poisoning ......- 20,950
Unspecified ....- 17,016
www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf
Since almost 15,700 other individuals managed to commit suicide W/O a gun, liberals will have to provide genetic proof that these 16,750 individuals are a genetically unique group, somehow predisposed to ''Suicide-by-gun-or-Live''. Since they cant, I submit that common sense dictates otherwise, which leaves the honest number of 12,500, not 30,000.
So if you are worried about gun homicide you are over 4X more likely to die in a car accident than by gun homicide.
And if you are worried about a gun accident you are 5X more likely to die in a fire accident, 32X more likely to die of a poisoning accident, and 74X more likely to die in a car accident than by a gun accident.
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But, that being said, I do not see why some common sense steps, possibly those outlined above, could not be taken to restrict access to both firearms and ammunition by criminals and the mentally unstable. The only problem is that all of this would require our liberal, conservative and independent representatives to come together and make it happen. Seeing all the other un-enforced laws they are already collectively responsible for, Im not holding my breath.
Posted by Rickstas at 08:56 PM : Jun 26, 2008
so tell us when and where and what danger you have personally seen regarding guns in the US.
If you do not like the US you do not ever have to come here, you are welcome to stay away and take your family with you if you like.
If you want to educate yourself you will see the safest parts of the US are the parts where law abiding citizens are allowed to carry firearms with them. Get educated before you pop off next time please.
Posted by bud28dy
Classic example of a closed minded, uneducated and ignorant moron who exercizes the 1st amendement before he has ammunition to do so.