Timing is everything, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s acceptance of a case regarding the constitutionality of a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., could become the most critically timed examination of a civil right in the nation’s history.
The court’s decision will come in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign, galvanizing gun-rights activists who will demand more than lip service about “support for the Second Amendment” from the front-runners in both parties by that time.
An affirmative ruling by the high court that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms – beyond membership in a militia – will crush a cornerstone of gun-control extremism, that the amendment is protective only of some mythical “collective right” of states to organize such militias. It won’t put the gun-control lobby out of business, but it will have to rewrite its rhetoric.
In the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, we have the makings of a perfect storm in the political, philosophical and constitutional arenas where gun rights are concerned.
Anti-gunners have perpetuated the myth that the U.S. Supreme Court has never held the Second Amendment protective of an individual right, when the court has referenced such an individual right several times.
Likewise, gun-rights opponents have consistently misrepresented the 1939 ruling in U.S. v. Miller as establishing a “collective right” when a thorough reading of the Miller decision shows this to be preposterous.
Politicians who have championed restrictive gun laws could face the likelihood of having their political legacies left in shambles. Others who pander to the crowds about their “support” of the Second Amendment will suddenly have to learn that you don’t “support” a civil right, you “live” it.
American voters will be able to pin down candidates from both major parties in the presidential and congressional races, all the way down to state and local contests, on where they stand on the issue of gun rights. It could be a watershed moment.
Philosophically, an affirmative ruling – even a narrow one that simply says District of Columbia residents enjoy the same right to have a handgun in their home for personal protection that citizens in the states now exercise – will force many Americans to rethink their attitudes about firearms and people who own them.
Such a ruling will not solve the predicament of social bigotry against gun owners, but as we saw in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, nothing good comes easily or all at once.
Constitutionally, there is no better time, and perhaps no better case, for the Supreme Court to rule that the Second Amendment protects individual citizens, not states. The right to keep and bear arms is as necessary today as it was when James Madison wrote the Second Amendment language more than 200 years ago, perhaps more so.
This right is not simply about national defense; it is about community and self-defense. As we note in our new book, “America Fights Back – Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age,” the right of self-defense is hardly passé.
With violent-crime rates rising, the ability to defend one’s self and family with a firearm is all too frequently the difference between life and death at the hands of predatory criminals who seem to glide through the legal system, committing one crime after another, often while awaiting trial for previous crimes, or while they are appealing prior convictions.
This is the right that District of Columbia resident Dick Heller cannot now exercise because of the District of Columbia’s 31-year-old handgun ban.
That ban has been a colossal failure, leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless against inner-city thugs, and crime rates over the years prove it. His dilemma is shared by tens of thousands of his neighbors and by fellow citizens in cities including Chicago, Morton Grove, Wilmette and Oak Park, Ill.
It is long past the time when this question should be answered, and this debate put to rest.
Alan Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. Dave Workman
is senior editor of Gun Week.
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