The Supreme Court Rules That The Second Amendment Means What It Says

The Supreme Court on June 26 ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution confers, as it says, a right to keep and bear arms and that the District of Columbia law effectively prohibiting the possession of handguns by most citizens is unconstitutional. I've written on this issue in a column that appeared shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre, in this blog twice. In the column I noted Judge Laurence Silberman's strong opinion in the D.C. Circuit, which the Supreme Court has just affirmed, and went on:

Limited regulation is allowed, Silberman wrote, but not a total ban. Somewhere on the road between a law banning possession of nuclear weapons and banning all guns, the Second Amendment stands in the way. This is the view as well of the liberal constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe.

And now it is the view of the Supreme Court itself.

By Michael Barone