Supreme court and gun control

In my mammoth posting yesterday I forgot to mention another key decision which will have a significant impact on US society; the decision of McDonald v Chicago (2010) which essentially has thrown out various pieces of gun-control legislation and underlined the 2nd Amendment which discusses a "well-armed militia". Ultimately the Supreme Court has said that Americans have the right to bear arms and to keep them. An earlier case, DC v Heller (2008) also supported the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms, but the most recent decision clarified some areas, specifically which parts of America the case referred to. Both decisions were voted on 5-4.

This CS Monitor article is useful, as is this post from Reason. The Economist reports on developments here too.

The right to bear arms is not without its limitations (i.e. not having a gun near a school for example), but the ability of states and the federal government to restrict gun-ownership has been curtailed. Various court cases will follow, and this will determine exactly how much power the states and local government has to limit gun ownership. Pressure Groups the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation will doubtless get involved.

For now, G&P students could make a clear argument that these two cases represent another move in a conservative direction in the history of the Supreme Court and its judgements (the only previous court case which referred to the Second Amendment occurred in 1939, with US v Miller). The legal arguments in the cases are probably not terribly useful in an essay, although Justice Alito did write the majority opinion in the McDonald case.

Another, possibly very charitable, interpretation is that the Second Amendment has always been seen as a guarantor in favour of gun ownership, and the Supreme Court was merely recognising that. The decision does not stop states from bringing in gun-control legislation in the future as this piece about Chicago's plans shows.

I'll finish by quoting the Economist piece above which explains the second interpretation well:

And yet campaigners for gun control have not been cast into utter gloom. They are consoled by the fact that in this week’s ruling Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, made a point of repeating something else the court said in Heller: the right to keep and bear arms is not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose”. The court emphasised two years ago that it was not questioning longstanding regulations such as preventing felons and the mentally ill from owning guns, or keeping guns out of sensitive places such as schools or government buildings. “We repeat those assurances here,” wrote Mr Alito in the new opinion.