WASHINGTON (June 28) — By extending the Second Amendment right to bear arms to state and local governments, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday opened the door to legal challenges to gun laws across the country. Whether the decision will change the status quo, though, remains unclear.
The case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, strikes down decades-old gun bans in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill. It follows almost two years to the day the court’s landmark Heller decision striking down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun possession. That case, also decided by an ideologically split court ruling 5-4, applied only to federal laws. Monday’s 214-page decision applies that right to governments at every level.
The decision broadening gun rights was announced just hours before confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan were to begin and underscored just how much is at stake in the makeup of the bench.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, told AOL News he intends “to make sure” Kagan is asked about today’s gun ruling, even though his group has reportedly clamped a lid on testifying at her hearing. “We were assured by the Obama administration that (Sonia) Sotomayor was a Second Amendment supporter, and we saw how that worked out,” he said.
Sotomayor, who was confirmed a year ago as the court’s first Hispanic justice, voted with the liberal minority that would have upheld state and local restrictions on gun ownership and that reaffirmed its dissent in the Heller decision.
As the court recesses for the summer and Justice John Paul Stevens retires from the bench, here is a look at what the gun rights decision means for:
Handgun Bans. They’re done. After the Heller ruling, few observers were surprised that the conservative-led Roberts court would apply its reasoning in the federal enclave to states and local jurisdictions. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito noted that in the previous case, “we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to possess a handgun in the home for the purpose of self-defense.” What’s good in Georgetown, in other words, is good along Lake Shore Drive.
Chicago. That said, the justices sent this particular case back to a lower court. So, for now, the city’s handgun ban will remain in effect. Still, Mayor Richard Daley didn’t wait for the court to rule to make clear what he would do if his city lost. He vowed to follow Washington’s lead when its local law was thrown out. The capital city passed strict new regulations for prospective gun owners, requiring residents who want to buy a gun to first pass a written test and undergo firearms training.
Gun Control. As a lawyer for the liberal advocacy group Alliance for Justice put it, “This doesn’t say you have the right to go marching around the streets with a gun without a license.”
Wrote Alito: “We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as ‘prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,’ ‘laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.’ We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, (this ruling) does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”
Wrote Alito: “We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as ‘prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,’ ‘laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.’ We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, (this ruling) does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”
Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation, the Bellevue, Wash.-based group that joined the lawsuit to overturn Chicago’s handgun ban, said the regulations cited by Alito are a far cry from “onerous regulations merely designed to discourage people” from exercising their constitutional right to own a firearm. Among them: licensing, registration, “heavy” permit fees and waiting periods of up to six months. “That kind of stuff is in trouble and it’s in big trouble,” he told AOL News.
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