D.C. v. Heller Decision Expected June 26th
The Supreme Court is preparing to release its decision tomorrow on Case 07-290, District of Columbia v. Heller. As you may remember, this is the first case directly addressing the Second Amendment to have reached the High Court since United States v. Miller in 1939. Millions of Americans anxiously await the ruling–politicians and firearm dealers, lawyers and police officers, gun owners and gun haters. Each faction fighting in the battle for or against gun rights hopes to gain an inch, or maybe even a foot, from the decision.
The ruling on this landmark case, an appeal of Parker v. District of Columbia, which overturned Washington’s 32-year ban on handguns, will ultimately decide whether the city’s residents have a constitutional right to keep and bear handguns. But it very well may also make or break gun control efforts nationwide.
As Walter Dellinger, the D.C. government’s attorney, addressed the Court during oral arguments last March, his positions didn’t seem to resonate with many of the justices. When Dellinger argued early on that the framers intended the Second Amendment to protect the states’ militia right to keep and bear arms “in a military context”, rather than protect an individual citizen’s same right, Justice Antonin Scalia responded:
I don’t see how there’s any, any, any contradiction between reading the second clause as a — as a personal guarantee and reading the first one as assuring the existence of a militia, not necessarily a State-managed militia because the militia that resisted the British was not State- managed. But why isn’t it perfectly plausible, indeed reasonable, to assume that since the framers knew that the way militias were destroyed by tyrants in the past was not by passing a law against militias, but by taking away the people’s weapons — that was the way militias were destroyed. The two clauses go together beautifully: Since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed (7).
Although many observers feel that the Court had taken a relatively pro-Second Amendment stance during oral arguments, there is still much uncertainty regarding the scope of the upcoming decision. Will the Court affirm an individual’s right to keep and bear arms solely for the defense of the state, as a universal protection guaranteeing the right to defend one’s home and person, something in between?
Despite the lack of attention gun control has received on the campaign trail, there is no doubt that the real battle will begin tomorrow morning as people on both sides of the political spectrum review the situation and plan their next move for or against the Second Amendment.