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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
By AP AND BULLETIN REPORTS -
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, expanding the conservative court’s embrace of gun rights since John Roberts became chief justice.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but they signaled that some limitations on the Constitution’s “right to keep and bear arms” could survive legal challenges.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli praised the decision and said his office is reviewing laws and regulations to make sure they comply with the court’s ruling.
“While we are still reviewing the decision, I am pleased that the Supreme Court has found that Second Amendment rights are as deserving of respect from state and local governments as are other rights found in the Bill of Rights,” Cuccinelli said in a news release. “I particularly agree with Justice Samuel Alito’s recognition that the right to keep and bear arms is ‘fundamental’ to America’s ‘scheme of ordered liberty.’”
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., and U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Albemarle County, also praised the ruling. Both were part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who signed an amicus brief in support of a gun owner seeking to overturn Chicago’s handgun ban.
“With this decision, the court has ruled that wholesale, sweeping bans and restrictions on firearm ownership cannot be enacted by state and local governments,” Webb said.
Perriello called the decision “a victory for gun owners everywhere.”
In the opinion, Justice Alito said for the court that the Second Amendment right “applies equally to the federal government and the states.”
The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and four liberals opposed. Roberts voted with the majority.
Two years ago, the court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess guns, at least for purposes of self-defense in the home.
That ruling applied only to federal laws. It struck down a ban on handguns and a trigger lock requirement for other guns in the District of Columbia, a federal city with unique legal standing. At the same time, the court was careful not to cast doubt on other regulations of firearms here.
Gun rights proponents almost immediately filed a federal lawsuit challenging gun control laws in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill., where handguns have been banned for nearly 30 years. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence says those laws appear to be the last two remaining outright bans.
Lower federal courts upheld the two laws, noting that judges on those benches were bound by Supreme Court precedent and that it would be up to the high court justices to ultimately rule on the true reach of the Second Amendment.
The Supreme Court already has said that most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights serve as a check on state and local, as well as federal, laws.
Monday’s decision did not explicitly strike down the Chicago area laws. Instead, it ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling. But it left little doubt that the statutes eventually would fall.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said he was disappointed with the ruling, adding that officials already are at work rewriting the ordinance to meet the court’s gun rights guarantee and protect Chicago residents from gun violence.
Alito made plain that local officials still have some leeway in crafting gun laws. He noted that the declaration that the Second Amendment is fully binding on states and cities “limits (but by no means eliminates) their ability to devise solutions to social problems that suit local needs and values.”
Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, each wrote a dissent. Stevens said that unlike the Washington case, Monday’s decision “could prove far more destructive — quite literally — to our nation’s communities and to our constitutional structure.”
The ruling seemed unlikely to resolve questions and ongoing legal challenges about precisely what sort of gun control laws are permissible.
The response of the District to the court’s ruling in 2008 is illustrative of the uncertainty.
Local lawmakers in Washington, D.C., imposed a series of regulations on handgun ownership, including requirements to register weapons and to submit to a multiple-choice test, fingerprinting and a ballistics test. Owners must also show they have gotten classroom instruction on handling a gun and have spent at least an hour on the firing range. Some 800 people have now registered handguns in the city.
Anticipating a similar result in their case, Chicago lawmakers are looking at even more stringent regulations.
But the new regulations themselves are likely to themselves be the subject of lawsuits, a fact noted by the dissenting justices Monday. Already in Washington, Dick Heller, the plaintiff in the original case before the Supreme Court, has sued the city over its new laws.
Heller argues that the stringent restrictions violate the intent of the high court’s decision. So far, a federal judge has upheld the limitations, but the case has been appealed.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said his politically powerful group “will continue to work at every level to ensure that defiant city councils and cynical politicians do not transform this constitutional victory into a practical defeat through Byzantine regulations and restrictions.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ardent proponent of gun control, said the ruling allows cities “to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists while at the same time respecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.”
New York does not ban guns, but restricts who can have them.
In his final appearance on the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens read aloud a brief letter to the other justices, after Roberts read one to Stevens.
The 90-year-old justice pointed out how times had changed since he joined the court in 1975. Then, he said, he would have addressed his remarks to his brethren.
Now, with two women as justices, he called them his colleagues. |
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