Washington, D.C., gun ban

For the past 31 years, criminals and thugs in Washington, D.C., seem to have had little problem acquiring inexpensive firearms -- the city has one of the worst records in the nation for violent crime.

But for law-abiding citizens, the situation has been very different.

The District's 31-year-old handgun law bars most residents from owning handguns and requires all legally owned firearms to be kept unloaded and either disassembled or under trigger lock, rendering them ineffective if a bad guy broke in.

Six district residents recently challenged the law in court, some saying they want to keep handguns in their homes for self-defense purposes.

In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, voting 2-1, said the district can't ban all handgun possession in the home. The appeals court said the Second Amendment protects a right that "existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense."

The ruling has been widely reported to mark the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a gun-control measure on Second Amendment grounds.

But on Oct. 16, 2001, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in New Orleans, ruled in United States v. Emerson: "We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of the text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are members of a select militia or performing military service or training."

Now, the District of Columbia will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the city's ban on handguns, in a case that could allow the high court to rule for the first time in 68 years whether the Constitution guarantees an individual's right to own firearms.

"We are willing to take our case to the highest court in the land to protect the city's residents," said Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said in a press release.

Good.

The justices last considered the question directly in 1939, ruling in the Miller case that the National Firearms Act -- which requires payment of a $200 tax and registration of any sawed-off shotgun -- is constitutional because sawed-off shotguns were not used in combat during World War I and are thus not the kind of "weapons of militia usefulness" whose private ownership the Second Amendment protects.

At no point, it's worth noting, did any party to the Miller case operate under the presumption that Mr. Miller was, at the time of his arrest, a member of the National Guard or any other uniformed military service. The court did not hold the Second Amendment applies only to such persons, because no such persons were involved in the case, and that suggestion was never raised.

Furthermore, in the 2001 Emerson decision, the New Orleans appeals court specifically rejected any reading of the Second Amendment's preamble -- "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" -- as meaning anything other than a simple directive that the entire body of the people, capable of bearing arms, must continue to be allowed to bear arms of current military usefulness, "such as the pistol involved here," without regard to membership in any uniformed government unit or service.

The appeals court even cited James Madison, who wrote in Federalist No. 46 that the proposed power of the Congress "to raise and support armies" posed no threat to liberty, since any such army, if misused, "would be opposed (by) a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands."

By all means, let the U.S. Supreme Court convene and read the Second Amendment for its meaning, aloud, for all to hear.

There is much corruption in the capital, no doubt. Let us see if it has spread so high that the plain English of the founders can now be made to mean something other than what it clearly says, all in the name of the desired convenience of the ruling class.

Freedom-loving Americans should not fear this case. They should welcome it. Let's find out if the judiciary is on the side of the common man and his most basic freedoms ... or not.