D.C. Outlines Case In Defense of Gun Ban
When District lawyers face the Supreme Court in March to defend the city's ban on handguns, they'll not only be fighting to save a local policy -- they'll also be asking the court to decide whether the Second Amendment protects gun ownership in an individual capacity or only under the auspices of a state-run militia.
Last Friday the District submitted its brief to the court, laying out in 79 pages why the District needs the ban and why the ban is consistent with a historical reading of the Second Amendment. "The primary concerns that animated those who supported the Second Amendment were that a federal standing army would prove tyrannical and that the power given to the federal government in the Constitution's Militia Clauses could enable it only to federalize, but also to disarm state militias," reads the brief. "There is no suggestion that the need to protect private uses of weapons against federal intrusion ever animated the adoption of the Second Amendment." The brief also argues that in allowing residents to own rifles and shotguns, the city's gun laws are no more restrictive than other reasonable limits on other constitutional rights that the court has allowed. It similarly claims that the Second Amendment only applies to federal legislation; states are allowed to restrict gun ownership.
Unlike past filings and arguments, the brief is a substantial and impressive work of historical and legal analysis. While the city originally seemed to focus its case on more practical matters -- it hoped to tug at the hearts of justices who are surely aware of the city's violent past and continuing struggles with crime -- the arguments presented to the court take aim at the idea that the Second Amendment was written to protect an individual's right to own a gun and that that right is absolute.
Of course, we expect the conservative wing of the court, led by the acerbic Antonin Scalia, will try and pick apart both the District's historical argument and its contention that limiting handgun ownership actually helps limit crime rather than leaving residents without the means to protect themselves from it. It should be difficult, though, for the court to disagree that like many other rights written into the Constitution, certain restrictions on gun ownership are permissible.
We've long been concerned that the gun ban hasn't helped reduce violent crime in the District -- if anything, it has ensured that criminals, not citizens, are the ones who are armed. But the brief makes a passionate and well-argued case for why the ban should be upheld, and, more broadly, why reasonable restrictions on gun ownerships in urban environments are necessary. Even if the court decides that the city's historical interpretation of the Second Amendment is wrong, it may still agree that the right to gun ownership is not absolute. And in that, the city will get as close to a victory as it could hope for.