Court brings new meaning to gun rights

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “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.”

Rarely in history have so few words brought to bear such intensive and impassioned debate and discord as these.

And rarely in history have such cussed, discussed and debated words from the Constitution been the subject of such little guidance as to their import, meaning and effect on the lives of citizens by our United States Supreme Court.

But last Thursday, the Supreme Court broke its 69-year silence on the meaning of the Second Amendment in striking down as unconstitutional a District of Columbia law banning handguns, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

It seems that Mr. Heller, a security guard, wished to keep a functioning pistol in his District of Columbia home for the defense of himself and his family, and so he challenged the law so prohibiting that on Second Amendment grounds.

The last time the Supremes gave any meaningful attention to the Second Amendment was in 1939, in the Arkansas case United States v. Miller.

In Miller, the court emphasized that the Second Amendment’s true purpose was to ensure the collective right of the citizenry to keep a militia, and essentially downplayed the notion that it ensured any Constitutional individual right to arm oneself.

And since the Miller case in 1939, a long line of intermediary federal court decisions have followed in refusing to recognize that the Second Amendment provides an individual the Constitutional right to own or possess a firearm.

But now the Heller case, as of last Thursday, breaks new ground in holding that there is a Constitutional right of individuals to keep a firearm, and that the D.C. law banning firearms is accordingly struck down as unconstitutional.

It should be noted that the court, in announcing this newly defined Constitutional right, also made clear that the right is limited, and that the government still has the Constitutional power to regulate firearms such as automatic weapons, sawed off shotguns, possession of firearms by felons, concealment of firearms, and a whole host of other firearms rules and regulations which are on the books most places.

But a blanket ban on firearms, like those in place in a number of major metropolitan areas such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago, are now deemed struck down as unconstitutional under the new and improved Second Amendment to the Constitution.

This was a 5-4 decision, with the familiar line-up of conservative Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Roberts and Alito, joining together in the majority, and the more liberal block of Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer dissenting as a group.

I can’t help but wonder if back in 1789 when the Second Amendment was proposed the drafters could have envisioned the intensity of the debate those 27 words have generated in the 157 pages that make up the Court’s decision in Heller.

What seems certain is now that conservative Justices Roberts and Alito have broken in their new Supreme Court chairs, the newly anointed conservative majority on the Court is poised to break new ground in addressing key issues of Constitutional law. 

Speaking of conservatives, I cannot help but note that it is they who have continually whined the loudest and most about “activist judges legislating from the bench.”

And now I’d like for those conservative whiners who may be dancing in the streets over this decision to explain to me how this is any different from that which they have routinely been so quick to condemn, a court decision striking down a law passed by elected representatives on Constitutional grounds.