THE OPENING SHOT - I | iCitizenForum

THE OPENING SHOT - I

By William Standring
06/27/08
1 comment

First in a Series of Five

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision that the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns violates the Second Amendment is but the opening shot in a long, and likely to be inconclusive, war of litigation between gun control opponents and advocates.

A 157-page ruling—including two dissents—the court published June 26 in District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, overturns a decision that has been the foundation of federal gun jurisprudence since at least 1939. To the minds of many, since the Bill of Rights was adopted.

The testy conservative majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, and joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr., was a taunting one-vote victory over more mainstream justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer.

Stevens read the lead dissent aloud from the bench, an unusual use of the court’s circumscribed time, to underscore his displeasure with an opinion in which Scalia repeatedly called him such things as “just plain wrong,” and “wrongheaded.” Scalia denigrated scholars who contributed a friend of the court brief, sneered at Justice Breyer, and may by his discourtesies have betrayed a consciousness of the weakness of his arguments. Stevens, though more gentlemanly, allowed Scalia to get enough of his goat to describe Scalia’s composition as, among other things, “overwrought and novel.” The byplay demonstrated the breach between the court’s philosophical wings.

The majority decision, a signal victory for such special interest groups as the National Rifle Association, was more annoying than decisive. In a pragmatic sense, it settled very little except the question of the damage partisan ideology does to law.

Next: The Heart of the Case

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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Filed Under: Supreme Court Decision, Second Amendment, Heller, gun rights

1 comments so far. Add a Comment

4 weeks ago an anonymous user commented:

Clearly a sensitive issue to many Americans that seems to be endless, and where the country is fiercely divided upon.

Anecdotal evidence reveals that the primary reason Americans have handguns is because other people have handguns. And why not? If someone attacks you with a handgun, you would naturally want a handgun to protect yourself as well and not something more passive like mace or pepper spray. But, think about that psychology for a moment, and if no citizen had any guns at all…why would you need one? The answer is…you wouldn’t.

But the answer to the larger question of getting rid of handguns needs us to examine both contemporay issues and the purpose of the 2nd Ammendment. 200 years ago the USA had a very small army and relied heavily on the militia and their ability to supply their own weapons when called upon to defend the nation at a moments notice (ie the minutemen) This is no longer the case. We have a substantially very large military and national guard and the need for a militia is no longer clear since the national guard now fills that role. They are now the 21st century minutemen. In essence, the 2nd Amendment needs to be amended to reflect these contemporary changes in order to allow states to introduce their own laws to ban handguns if they chose to.

The DC’s ban is an attempt to stop the senseless violence in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the country. They are not stopping us from having a rifle to stand ready to defend the nation from invaders…they are just stopping us from having pathetically small handguns that seem to serve no purpose but for crime.

As a practical comprimise, I say get rid of the handguns and keep the bigger weapons in an armory. If the country is invavded or people want to go hunting with them, then give the weapons to the citizens. But I hear people say “we don’t trust the government with our personal guns”. Well, if you don’t trust the government then why do you want a gun to defend it from the enemy?

Estela Oira