2nd Amendment Shootout!

"On every occasion...[of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed." –Thomas Jefferson, June 12, 1823, Letter to William Johnson

For the first time in 60 years, the Supreme Court has decided to hear a case regarding the Second Amendment, and the ruling will impact future laws, current regulations, and possibly even the upcoming elections. The Court’s decision to hear the case was the result of legislative upheaval caused by a series of cases in the lower court systems, in which the D.C. gun bans forbidding private ownership of handguns were called into question.

While a majority of the courts have upheld the existing gun laws, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia became the first federal appeals court in the history of the United States to declare a gun control law unconstitutional based on the Second Amendment, and the second court to interpret the Second Amendment as applying to private gun ownership.

The debate centers on the exact meaning of the Second Amendment. The Founding Father’s slightly ambiguous statement reads: “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.” Gun ban advocates insist that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applies only to state militias, whereas the D.C. residents like Shelly Parker, who sued the city, claim that the Amendment applies to private gun ownership as well. On March 9, 2007 the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. declared a 2-1 ruling in favor of the residents, saying “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.” The ruling overturned one of the most stringent gun bans in the country, which restricted residents from owning handguns and also required that rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock.”   

Both the defendants and the plaintiffs petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, and the Supreme Court has agreed and will address whether the D.C. gun bans violate the Second Amendment rights of non-militia citizens who wish to have private ownership of functioning firearms. Oral arguments are expected in the spring, with a decision before June 30, but there is also a chance that the case could be heard later in the schedule, with arguments in the fall before elections, and the decision coming after Election Day.

While many residents say they have a constitutional right to protect themselves, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty argues, “Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die.” He is concerned that if the gun law is overthrown there will be even more handguns on the street, and even more gun-related deaths. The dissenting vote in the D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals, Judge Henderson, wrote, “…there is no dispute that…the Second Amendment’s declaration and guarantee that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed’ relates to the Militia of the States only.”

Out of context, the Second Amendment is admittedly ambiguous, but such statements from city mayors and Court judges cast a doubt as to whether or not they have ever actually read anything written by the Founding Fathers. The Declaration of Independence was written in response to a tyrannical, oppressive government, its writers above all aiming to protect the American people from such power. If the Second Amendment was only intended to protect the gun-carrying rights of state militias, then by what means could the common people protect themselves if the government would not? The Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment because they wanted to be sure that the power of the people could not be taken away without some method of retaliation and defense. As James Madison stated in his Federalist Paper #46, "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose people are afraid to trust them with arms." Likewise, Thomas Jefferson himself quoted with approval an essay by Cesare Beccari in a 1764 speech, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined or determined to commit crimes. Such laws only make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assassins; they serve to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." John Adams also defended the Constitution by saying, "Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense," and George Washington went so far as to state, "Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth (and) keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable...” And Samuel Adams stated at a Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."

There is no doubt that our Founding Fathers were referring to the common citizen, and not just state militias. As Richard Henry Lee said, "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms." Hopefully the Supreme Court will interpret the Constitution with respect to the context in which it was meant to be read. Then, the ruling can serve as a precedent preventing other government policy makers from creating laws that take away American citizens’ unalienable rights in the future.