5-4, In Favor of the 2nd Amendment

June 26th, 2008

Yesterday, I blogged about the first and second strikes pitched to citizens by the SCOTUS. Today the court scored an RBI with the Heller decision.

The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that individual Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms, ending a ban on owning handguns in the capital in its first ruling on gun rights in 70 years.

The court’s 5-4 landmark decision — on whether the right to keep and bear arms is an individual or collective right — said the city’s law violated the second amendment of the US constitution which the justices said guaranteed citizens the right to keep guns at home for self-defense.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the second amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in the court’s decision.

He added the court took seriously the problem of handgun violence in cities like Washington and said there were “a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.”

“The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home,” the court ruled.

This calls for a gun rights celebration — at the local range.