WHAT THE COURT SAID - IV
Fourth in a Series of Five
Read Third in the Series
Understanding the Second Amendment
If in District of Columbia v. Heller, the gun control case, the United States Supreme Court concluded that D.C. cannot ban handguns, it did not say that gun control was unconstitutional. Not even unconstitutional in the District, the only jurisdiction in which Heller, for now, applies.
At that, the justices left the District’s licensing law intact. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said, “we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation.” Twenty-two pages closer to his point, he said Second Amendment rights are not unlimited and that:
Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
In a footnote, as if saying something he hopes will be overlooked, Scalia dodges the biggest question the case raised: “We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.”
Until the court comes up with that list, the constitutionality of any gun law is a crap shoot.
Make no mistake, though, whatever else the decision “leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” Just as it gives us little help on what gun restrictions may pass constitutional muster, the court gives no guidance on how we are to distinguish those upstanding household defenders from the Sirhan Sirhans of the world. They have hearths and homes to defend, too, you know—at least until hate gets the better of their judgment and they suddenly cease to be law abiding and responsible.
In a passage that dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens Stevens surely had in mind when he accused the majority opinion of being “overwrought,” Scalia wrote that though the majority is concerned about D. C. gun crime, some gun control measurers are “off the table.” Like outright handgun bans. In some quarters, Scalia says, the need of the newly interpreted Second Amendment is debatable, “but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”
Nevertheless, as he says, the ruling only finds that “the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self defense.”
Only the District’s. No one else’s.
Chicago’s similar ban and prohibition, like San Francisco’s and other cities, remains constitutional. If tomorrow your community adopts a firearms registration, and ban, and prohibition law that conforms with your state’s law, it will be, too.
For now.
Next: : Annie Get Your Lawyer
Read Standring’s related blogs The Second Amendment Goes to Heller and A Well Regulated Militia: Did the Supreme Court Shoot Itself In the foot?
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
