Second amendment under review

The US Supreme Court is to hear oral argument this week on the meaning of the right to bear arms for the first time in over 50 years

Non-Americans often look on in amazement when another high profile shooting occurs and there is little clamour for stricter gun laws. In one area where legislators have taken a tough approach there has been a challenge to its constitutionality. This week the US Supreme Court is due to hear oral argument in Washington D.C. v. Heller.

According to the Washington Post:

“Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it examines whether the District’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

The nine justices, none of whom has ever ruled directly on the amendment’s meaning, will consider a part of the Bill of Rights that has existed without a definitive interpretation for more than 200 years.

“This may be one of the only cases in our lifetime when the Supreme Court is going to be interpreting the meaning of an important provision of the Constitution unencumbered by precedent,’’ said Randy E. Barnett, a constitutional scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center. “And that’s why there’s so much discussion on the original meaning of the Second Amendment.’’

From the New York Times:

“The local law, which dates to 1976, is generally regarded as the strictest gun-control statute in the country. It not only bars the private possession of handguns, but also requires rifles and shotguns to be kept in a disassembled state or under a trigger lock.

Exactly what the Second Amendment was intended to do is at the heart of the dispute. With a combined total of 69 briefs, the two sides offer competing historical and linguistic analyses of the Second Amendment’s 27 words, mystifying in their arrangement and punctuation: “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.”

Forty-four states have constitutional provisions that unambiguously protect a right to individual gun ownership, a fact that limits the potential impact of the court’s ruling no matter which way the decision goes. The District of Columbia, of course, is not a state. How the justices will take that fact into account, if at all, remains to be seen.”

There is a fascinating summary here of what the two sides in the case are arguing over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.