The Post is reporting today that a majority of the members of Congress have filed a brief before the Supreme Court arguing that the District’s gun ban should be ruled unconstitutional. All told, 305 members — 55 in the Senate; 250 in the House, 68 of them Democrats — signed on to the brief, which was pushed by famous gun enthusiast Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). The brief argues:

…historically Congress has interpreted the Second Amendment as recognizing the right of law-abiding individuals to keep and bear arms. This Court should give due deference to the repeated findings over different historical epochs by Congress, a co-equal branch of government, that the Amendment guarantees the personal right to possess firearms. The District’s prohibitions on mere possession by law-abiding persons of handguns in the home and having usable firearms there are unreasonable per se.

One of the few Republicans in the Senate not to sign, though, was Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who withheld his signature because he believes that this is a matter of home rule:

“While the District of Columbia is not a state, it operates under a framework of laws enacted by the Congress which gives its elected leaders the duty to advocate the positions and interest of its citizens before the federal judiciary.”

While we’ve struggled with whether or not the District’s restrictive gun laws should be re-tooled, we’ve consistently opposed Congress’s repeated attempts to impose or overturn local laws. And when it comes to the city’s gun laws, they’ve made overturning them an almost annual tradition. (Let’s not forget that last year’s House vote on D.C. voting rights legislation was held up when a crafty Texas representative tried to insert language nullifying the city’s gun laws.)

Of course, this is an issue of national importance, so there are bound to be a number of concurring and opposing opinions from across the country (Maryland and Virginia have taken opposite sides in the Supreme Court battle; SCOTUSBlog has a list of recently filed amicus briefs). Regardless, we appreciate Sen. Warner’s sound reasoning in choosing not to sign on to Sen. Hutchison’s brief. It’s rare that someone in Congress of Warner’s pedigree and standing so clearly lays out one of the fundamental issues here — home rule.