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Individual Right to Bear Arms
Wins Favor in Court Argument
Tony Mauro
NY
Law Journal
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
WASHINGTON - When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy
is cast as the swing vote in a case before the Court, he often
waits until late in the oral argument to tip his hand.
But as the Court yesterday considered the landmark Second Amendment
case D.C. v. Heller, Justice Kennedy was quick to lay bare his
view on the scope of the right to bear arms contained in the amendment.
The first part, he said, was meant to reaffirm "the existence
and the importance" of the treatment of state militias contained
in the Constitution itself. The second part, he asserted, means
that "in addition" there is a right to bear arms, which
he later declared was a "general right."
The Second Amendment reads, "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."
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Justice Kennedy's comments appeared to spell trouble for efforts
by the District of Columbia to revive its strict handgun ban,
although lawyers for both the Bush administration and gun-rights
advocates acknowledged that some lesser regulation of the right
would be acceptable.
Read the transcript of yesterday's argument.
Counting Justice Kennedy, it appeared that five or more justices
were ready to recognize some form of an individual right to keep
and bear arms that is only loosely tethered, if at all, to the
functioning of militias. What kind of regulation of that individual
right will be allowed by those justices is uncertain.
But after nearly 70 years of sidestepping the meaning of the
Second Amendment, one thing was clear: The U.S. Supreme Court
was finally ready to tackle the knotty question head-on.
When the arguments were over, gun-control advocates seemed less
pessimistic than before the session began, though they did not
predict victory.
Joshua Horwitz, director of the Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence,
who filed a brief in the case and watched the arguments, conceded
he cannot count five votes for a strictly militia-rights view
of the Second Amendment that would allow for almost unlimited
regulation of firearms. But he could conceive of five justices
adopting an individual-rights view that will mean "a lot
of regulations will be OK. The outcome is not necessarily poor
for us."
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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