High court to hear handgun ban

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider a challenge to Washington, D.C.’s, strict handgun ban, setting up one of the biggest Second Amendment cases in U.S. history.

Without comment or a recorded vote, the court announced that it would hear the gun ban challenge next year. The case returns the high court to a question it last considered in 1939: Whether individuals, outside of a state militia, enjoy a constitutional right to own firearms. Oral arguments are likely in the spring, a decision by the end of June.

“Clearly, the Supreme Court wants to decide the core question of what the Second Amendment means,” Dennis Henigan, the legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, said in an interview.

Henigan’s opponents in the gun debate, even those who disagree violently over the merits, concur that the case titled District of Columbia v. Heller could produce a landmark ruling.

“It’s a very big deal,” Alan Gura, the leading attorney in the challenge to D.C.’s tough gun laws, said on the Supreme Court steps Tuesday afternoon. “Laws that disarm people, laws that leave people defenseless, are going to fail.”

The case puts the Second Amendment’s wording, long subject to academic debate, front-and-center.

In full, the amendment states:

“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.”

In its unsigned order Tuesday, the Court said it would consider whether the Washington, D.C., law violates “the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.”

Put another way, the court will be deciding whether the constitutional right to bear firearms is an “individual” right or one that’s attached to a state interest in maintaining a militia. If the court decides that it’s an individual right, it will be easier for proponents of gun ownership to challenge other gun restrictions.

“For over 70 years, the court has refused to answer the question of whether the right to bear firearms is an individual right,” said Clark Neily, another attorney challenging D.C.’s law.

Supported by the libertarian Cato Institute, gun-rights advocates first took aim at Washington’s 31-year-old gun law in 2003. Written when the city was dubbed the nation’s “murder capital,” the law prohibits ownership of handguns by all residents except retired police officers.