THE HEART OF THE CASE - II
Second in a Series of Five
Read First in the Series
The Opening Shot
At the heart of the gun control dispute the Supreme Court settled in District of Columbia v. Heller was the meaning of twenty-seven words, three commas, and a period: “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 case was brought in behalf of Dick Anthony Heller, a pistol-packing federal courts building guard contesting a 1976 District of Columbia weapons law and befriended by well-bankrolled gun control opponents. The city’s thirty-two year old firearms ordinance required Heller to obtain a handgun license, which the chief of police grants to no one, to keep a six-shooter at home. Even if he could have gotten a license, his sidearm had to be unloaded, and disassembled or locked for him to bear it around the house. Same applied to more readily licensable shotguns and rifles.
Disassembled or locked and unloaded artillery is of doubtful use when a burglar drops by. But having to reassemble or unlock his Glock gives an angry husband time to reflect before blowing away an argumentative wife, or drilling a toddler who, at the risk of being mistaken for a second story man, comes in the middle of the night to ask you to get her another glass of water.
Be that as it may, the law was intended to drain, drop by drop, the pool of handguns used to kill and main hundreds of citizens each year in the capital of a nation where, as Justice Steven Breyer mentioned in his dissenting opinion, “More male teenagers die from firearms than from all natural causes combined.” The point of the law was not to prevent people from defending their households. It was to prevent them from having to defend their households.
The decision was announced the day after a guy in a Kentucky plastics factory got into an argument with his boss, went home on break to get his gun, and blew away five co-workers before killing himself in the exercise of his right to keep and bear arms.
Next: Understanding the Second Amendment
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?
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