Landmark Decision in Favor of Handgun Ownership for Defense
Jun 26 2008Landmark Ruling: U.S. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Americans to have handguns in their homes for protection. June 27, 2008.
The Supreme Court, splitting along ideological lines, today declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns for self-defense. This ruling strikes down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun ownership as unconstitutional.
The 5 to 4 decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia represented a monumental change in federal jurisprudence.
It said that the government may impose some restrictions on gun ownership, but that the District of Columbia’s toughest rules in the nation ban went too far.
Scalia wrote that the Constitution leaves the District a number of options for combating the problem of handgun violence, “including some measures regulating handguns.”
“But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” he continued. “These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.”
Scalia was joined by the most consistently conservative justices — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen G. Breyer voted against the ruling.
The court also held unconstitutional the requirement that shotguns and rifles be kept disassembled or unloaded or outfitted with a trigger lock. The court called it a “prohibition against rendering any lawful
firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee quickly put out a statement endorsing the decision, calling it a “landmark victory” for Second Amendment rights. “Today’s ruling . . .
makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans,” McCain said.
Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the Democrats’ all but certain nominee, also issued a statement saying that “I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures.
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