Supreme Court And Gun Control

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Indeed, District of Columbia v. Heller actually reached the court over the N.R.A.'s objections. Alan Gura, one of the lawyers challenging the ban, told me that the N.R.A. originally opposed bringing the case, fearing it could lead to a ruling that would establish a government right to regulate arms sales. The N.R.A. believes that its famously effective lobbying finds a more receptive forum in Congress and state legislatures than in the less predictable courts. Gun manufacturers—closely aligned with the N.R.A., especially since the Smith & Wesson boycott—also would rather have skipped the courts.

While the case has some surprising opponents, its advocates defy stereotyping too. Robert Levy, a scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, doesn't own a gun and doesn't want to. Still, as a libertarian, Levy had long nursed the idea of filing a lawsuit that would resolve the gun-control debate on the side of individuals who want to buy guns. Using the fortune he made in the securities industry, Levy financed the case, and rather than recruiting cliché gun nuts for plaintiffs, he enlisted a diverse group to bring the suit. One of them is a middle-aged gay man who bought a gun to defend himself from attacks by bigots.

District of Columbia v. Heller revolves around the question of whether D.C.'s gun ban is unconstitutional, a violation of the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The court could make a sweeping ruling about whether the Constitution allows individual gun ownership to be regulated at all. Last March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, considered to be the nation's second-highest court, ruled that the D.C. law was unconstitutional because the right to bear arms applies to all individuals, not just those in a militia, as the Second Amendment suggests.

No one knows what will happen with the case in the Roberts court, but I know what I would do. I have no personal interest in guns, and I'm agnostic as to whether gun bans really do anything to prevent crimes like the one that ended Tim's life. Obviously, the law in D.C. did not save Tim; it seems to have served only to disarm the law-abiding. I believe the District's ban is draconian: It holds that just current and retired police officers can own handguns. You can own a rifle, but it must be disassembled, making it impossible to use for self-defense. It seems crazy that the named litigant in the case, Dick Heller, who carries a handgun for his job as a guard at a courthouse, can't have one in his home because security guards are technically not police officers. It's one thing to regulate gun sales, but a flat-out ban seems like bad policy in terms of its effectiveness and whom it affects.

Still, I hope the court upholds the ban. It's overwhelmingly popular here; no D.C. council member wants it repealed. I'm not a lawyer, let alone a scholar, but I see no reason to interpret the Second Amendment as forbidding a jurisdiction from banning a particular weapon, whether it's an assault rifle or a handgun. As Linda Singer, D.C.'s former attorney general, told me, "Banning one particularly dangerous arm does not mean banning the right to bear arms." She notes that handguns are by far the predominant weapon used in murders and suicides in Washington and elsewhere. In 1976, the District's second year of autonomous home rule, the gun ban was one of the first laws passed, in part because all of the city's rapes in 1974 that involved a firearm were committed with a handgun.

In the wake of Tim's murder, it would be easy to give a knee-jerk liberal or conservative response: We need more gun control; we need less gun control. But the most important thing, to me anyway, is who decides. That ought to be the people of D.C., like Tim's grieving family, through their elected representatives. Tim's life is too precious to be reduced to either side's talking point.

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