Court upholds right to keep weapons at home
By Jennifer McMenamin | Sun reporter
June 27, 2008
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.
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.
