In a historic ruling yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right for individuals to keep guns in their homes for self-defense. It was the first major high court ruling on the Second Amendment.
The 5-4 decision came in a closely watched challenge to a 32-year-old Washington law that prohibited residents from keeping any kind of handgun or shotguns and rifles without trigger locks in their homes - the toughest gun law in the nation.
Although the high court's decision will have no immediate impact on gun laws beyond the district's borders - including state gun control laws like those in Maryland - constitutional scholars and advocates on both sides of the gun debate predicted a flood of litigation testing first whether the Second Amendment protection should be applied to state statutes, and then, in a second wave, whether specific state and local gun laws infringe upon an individual's right to bear arms.
"It's a good day for D.C. and a good day, I think, for the country," said Robert A. Levy, a multimillionaire and senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute who bankrolled the case and recruited plaintiffs to sue the district over the handgun ban.
"I think the city will be a safer place because of this," he added. "Despite all the talk from government officials saying this makes life in the district riskier, I think, quite to the contrary ... it will give citizens the right and ability to defend themselves. Right now, all we have is criminals who think they have carte blanche to do whatever they want."
The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, made clear that the ruling does not endanger long-standing laws that restrict the carrying of concealed weapons, that regulate gun sales, that prohibit unusually dangerous firearms and that ban the possession of guns by felons and the mentally disabled and in certain locations, such as schools and government buildings.
"There is much that is reassuring about the majority opinion because the court made it crystal clear that reasonable gun restrictions, enacted to promote public safety that are not as restrictive as the D.C. laws, would not raise these constitutional issues," said Dennis Henigan, vice president for law and policy at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "This decision gives the constitutional green light to a wide range of life-saving gun laws."
