USA Today: Gun Rights Debate

[Melensdad]

I thought this was a pretty good article, especially given that it came from a generally anti-gun source:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...er_N.htm?imw=Y

Here are just some snippets to consider:

Do you have a legal right to own a gun?
Updated 8h 48m ago


POLL EXCERPT

Do you believe the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns, or does it only guarantee members of state militias such as National Guard units the right to own guns?

Right of all Americans --- Only state militias

All adults 73% --- 20%

Gun owners 91% --- 6%

Non-Gun owners 63% --- 28%

By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Guns, and questions about how much power the government has to keep people from owning them, are at the core of one of the most divisive topics in American politics.
Nowhere is that divide more pronounced than in the gap between Americans' beliefs about their rights under the Second Amendment, and how courts have interpreted the law.

Nearly three out of four Americans — 73% — believe the Second Amendment spells out an individual right to own a firearm, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 1,016 adults taken Feb. 8-10.

Yet for decades, federal judges have seen the Constitution differently, allowing a range of gun-control measures imposed by governments seeking to curb gun violence.

And then later writes:

Now, with the D.C. case before the Supreme Court, the administration isn't taking such a hard line on an individual right to own and use guns, a stance pushed by the NRA and its allies. Instead, the White House is urging the justices to adopt a legal standard that would protect an individual right to own guns but protect federal firearms laws.

And then later:

Courts at odds with public

The Second Amendment says, "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." Until recently, judges seized on the first part, the collective "militia" right, rather than the second clause, "the right of the people."

The last time the Supreme Court took up a major gun-rights case was in 1939. That dispute, United States v. Miller, involved two men who were caught transporting an illegal sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The court did not directly address the scope of the Second Amendment. Yet its decision rested on the notion that the Second Amendment protects a collective right to firearms, not an individual right.

In the years since, most lower federal courts interpreted the Miller decision to mean there was no individual right to have firearms.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia set the stage for the high court to weigh in when it ruled that the Second Amendment "protects an individual right to keep and bear arms … for such activities as hunting and self-defense." The appeals court invalidated D.C.'s ban on handguns in the home.

Attorneys for Dick Anthony Heller, a security guard who wanted to keep a handgun in his Washington home for self-defense and who helped start the case, urged the justices to affirm that decision.

Heller's attorneys note that in America's early days, colonists were bitter about the British king's disarmament of the English population. The attorneys say "the Second Amendment's text thus … confirms the people's right to arms."

Lawyers for the D.C. government echo lower courts that have rejected such a notion: "The text and history of the Second Amendment conclusively refute the notion that it entitles individuals to have guns for their own private purposes."

D.C. officials say they banned handguns because such weapons "are disproportionately linked to violent and deadly crime."

The Bush administration's shifting stance on gun control has added political drama to the case.

Ashcroft's position seven years ago made him a hero to the 4 million-member NRA, which put him on the cover of its monthly magazine and called him a "breath of fresh air to freedom-loving gun owners."

The next year, in 2002, Justice Department lawyers said that any government regulation of gun rights should be subject to the highest level of judicial scrutiny, which would make it harder to enact gun laws.

Now, the Bush administration is siding with Heller in a"friend of the court" brief — but with a large caveat. Justice Departmentlawyers have backed off their earlier position and now say gun regulation should be subjected to a lesser level of scrutiny that would allow far more regulation than the 2002 stance.