AROUND THE NATION: GUN BRIEFS
On 18 March, the justices of the Supreme Court will hear arguments in District
of Columbia v. Heller, a case that could decide once and for all whether the
Second Amendment to the Constitution supports an individual right
use of firearms or merely a collective right to militias. Unfortunately, the
Bush administration's stance on the issue became murkier when U.S. Solicitor
General Paul Clement submitted a brief to the Supreme Court arguing that the
U.S. Court of Appeals had erred in striking down DC's handgun ban. The Bush
administration managed to affirm the individual-right interpretation of the 2nd
Amendment while also condemning the previous ruling of the Court of Appeals,
since it jeopardizes the government's ability to regulate firearms. In other
words, the administration is fine with individual ownership of firearms so
long as the federal government can decide which firearms you can own and
where you can take them. The solicitor general's brief asks the Supreme Court
to return District of Columbia v. Heller to a lower court, where instead of
flatly declaring that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right
to keep and bear arms, the court should rule that the Second Amendment gives
you the rights that the government wants you to have.
On the other hand, The Washington Post reports, "A majority of the Senate and
more than half of the members of the House will file a brief today urging the
Supreme Court to uphold a ruling that the District's handgun ban violates the
Second Amendment." The brief notes, "This court should give due deference
to the repeated findings over different historical epochs by Congress, a
co-equal branch of government, that the amendment guarantees the personal
right to possess firearms." It continues, "The District's prohibitions on
mere possession by law-abiding persons of handguns in the home and having
usable firearms there are unreasonable."
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