Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apartments
Classifieds
Shopping
Just 27 words in the Constitution have long stirred heated debate with literally life or death repercussions:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court devoted more than 150pages to interpreting those 27 words and produced a historic, controversial ruling that will have little direct effect on most Hoosiers, is measured in how far-reaching it is intended to be but, nonetheless, is a disturbing reversal that will most likely hamper the authority of Chicago, Washington and other cities with anti-gun statutes to control gun violence.
In addition, the ruling demonstrated in unambiguous terms that Justice Anthony Kennedy is one of the most powerful officials in America as he again provided the deciding vote in a court split between four conservatives and four liberals.
Gun control advocates and gun rights absolutists have long argued whether the first part of the Second Amendment, regarding militias, limits whom the second part addresses. The argument continued last week, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing a majority opinion that determined that the first part of the amendment was an introduction meant only to preserve militias and not intended to limit the amendment’s “operative language.” Justice John Paul Stevens argued in dissent that the amendment’s clear intent was to tie the right to keep and bear arms with membership in a state militia.
Indisputably, the court’s ruling last week found such an individual right, striking down the local Washington ordinance that banned handguns and required rifles and shotguns to be unloaded and either disassembled or protected by trigger locks while in the home. Americans, Scalia and the majority determined, have a constitutional right to a loaded gun in their homes.
In some ways, Scalia and the conservative majority took an approach that has traditionally been criticized by many conservatives as judicial activism. They overruled a locally adopted law, and they newly defined a “right” not clearly and plainly written in the document.
But the majority also said the ruling applies only to guns in common use, such as pistols, rifles and shotguns, preserving the ability of the federal and local governments to ban, for example, automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Laws in some states and cities prohibiting concealed weapons also appear to remain constitutional.
Tough local laws strictly limiting handguns in cities including Chicago and Toledo, though, may now well be subject to being overturned, and the ruling could well unleash a torrent of lawsuits challenging a wide variety of gun regulations.
The ruling, however, will have little local effect in Indiana, where the state constitution establishes a right to own guns for self-defense in more precise language than the U.S. Constitution.
While both sides of the gun control argument will continue to debate the worthiness and effect of last week’s ruling, there is little doubt that Kennedy once again was the decisive voice, demonstrating to voters the great importance of presidential appointments of Supreme Court justices. Earlier this month, he sided with the same four liberals who opposed the Second Amendment decision to order that terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay have constitutional rights. He has supplied the decisive vote in 5-4 decisions that upheld more conservative laws such as those banning partial birth abortions, and more liberal laws such as allowing the government to regulate motor vehicle emissions.
The repercussions of last week’s decision will reverberate through the courts for years and – considering the likelihood of at least one Supreme Court vacancy occurring in the next four years – should serve as another reminder to voters about the importance of this year’s presidential election.
