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      Legal experts believe major attention will be paid to the National Rifle Association’s amicus brief because the NRA is rightfully perceived as the most effective grassroots advocacy and civil rights organization defending the fundamental right of the people to Keep and Bear Arms. Much of the NRA’s brief is devoted to disproving the false claim of the District of Columbia and many of its amicus supporters that the amendment applies to states’ power to create militias and has nothing to do with individual freedom.
   Among NRA’s conclusions is that, “The most significant effect of the District’s handgun ban is to effectively deny law-abiding citizens the freedom to exercise their common law right to self-defense, a right exercised by millions of citizens annually and one that is sorely needed in the District.”
   Among the other 47 friend-of-the-court briefs filed in support of declaring D.C.’s gun ban unconstitutional, perhaps the most remarkable—especially since its significance has been largely ignored by the mainstream media—is the brief filed by 250 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 55 United States senators and Vice President Dick Cheney in his role as president of the Senate.
   Never before has a majority of both houses of Congress signed onto any amicus brief. And never before has any vice president been an amicus party before the Supreme Court. That brief was prepared by Stephen Halbrook, scholar, author and litigator.
   The congressional brief succinctly spells out that the federal legislature, since founding of the nation, has consistently enacted laws “which explicitly declared its understanding of the Second Amendment as guaranteeing fundamental, individual rights.”
   Halbrook’s brief provides an in-depth review of legislative history highlighting key examples of congressional extension, recognition and embrace of the Second Amendment as an individual right. That history moves from early pronouncements, to the Freedmen’s Bureau Act in 1866, which extended the right for former slaves, to “Katrina” legislation enacted in 2006 forbidding the confiscation of firearms from private citizens during civil emergencies.
   Equally as remarkable as the sheer weight of support from Congress and the vice president is the brief signed by 31 of the nation’s state attorneys general making their case for the Second Amendment. They state, “The individual right to keep and bear arms is protected by the United States Constitution and the constitutions of 44 states . . . Moreover, the District of Columbia’s categorical gun ban is markedly out of step with the judgment of the legislatures of the 50 states, all of which protect the right of private citizens to own handguns.”

   In this history-making brief, states weighing in on the side of the Second Amendment include Texas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.
   In that brief, written by Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, the state legal authorities most clearly lay out the issues before the high court, saying that District of Columbia v. Heller:
   “. . . [P]resents two straightforward questions, each of which will determine whether the Second Amendment has any modern relevance. First, as a threshold matter, does the Amendment protect any individual rights at all. And second, do the challenged District ordinances—which collectively prohibit the possession of any functioning firearm in one’s own home—run afoul of that right.”
   In answering those questions, the states’ brief also strongly countered the position of the U.S. solicitor general, whose amicus brief asked the Supreme Court to remand the Heller case back to the lower court based on the Department of Justice’ sense that although the Second Amendment is an individual rather than collective right, it should be considered under an “intermediate” or lesser measure of scrutiny than was used by the Court of Appeals in declaring the D.C. gun law unconstitutional. Notably, all fundamental rights—like the right of free speech—are measured against infringement under a standard of “strict scrutiny.”
   Again, returning to the questions before the court, the brief from the 31 states concludes:
   “If the answer to either question were in the negative, then the Second Amendment’s protections would be rendered illusory. For the same reason, the amici states believe that the Department of Justice’s position is indefensible . . .” (Emphasis added.)
   “An individual right that can be altogether abrogated is no right at all. Amici states are sovereign governmental bodies with strong interests in maintaining extant regulations barring, for example, convicted felons from possessing firearms. But none of the 31 amici states believes that its citizens’ constitutional rights should be effectively erased from the Bill of Rights. Because, under any standard, a total prohibition on the possession of firearms cannot be reconciled with the individual right to keep and bear arms, the Court of Appeal’s judgment should be affirmed.”
   The complications created by the Department of Justice remand request were answered in numerous other briefs, including NRA’s. But the most forceful response to that tactic came in a brief filed by the Goldwater Institute:
   “. . . [T]he government urges this Court to apply a lower, “intermediate” or “heightened” standard of review to measures that impair this right, rather than the strict scrutiny that traditionally attaches to fundamental personal rights enumerated in the Constitution. The government also would have this Court decline to apply and vindicate the right, and instead leave that task to a lower court on remand.
   “No basis in law or logic supports those outcomes.
   “The Second Amendment right does not deserve second class status . . .” (Emphasis added.)
   In these 47 briefs, literally every aspect of the Second Amendment is covered: from pre-Revolutionary history; to the thoughts, debates and intent of the Founders; to modern recognition of the practical importance of the individual right to self-defense; to the historic participation of armed individual citizens for national defense during wartime; to the importance of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms of women and minorities. Even the preferred reading of the Founders on the topics of individual armed selfdefense going back to the writings of ancient Greeks is covered.
   A brief submitted by Robert Dowlut and Alice Marie Beard for the American Legislative Exchange Council on the state constitutions clarifies the intent of the Founders. Also, the sciences of sociology and criminology are deeply explored and applied in support of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and to the steady climb of violent crime in D.C., unabated by any laws applying to private arms held by law-abiding citizens.
   Other briefs compile extraordinarily well-researched constitutional law demonstrating the equal weight of the Second Amendment as a fundamental right of the people enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In those briefs, the best legal scholars debunk the notion that the Second Amendment is a collective right afforded by government to militias, while the other rights listed in the Bill of Rights apply to individuals.
   Among the better reads are briefs by Nelson Lund, who holds the Patrick Henry Chair of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University Law School, writing for the Second Amendment Foundation; frequent America’s 1st Freedom contributor David Kopel’s and Professor Don Kates’ coverage of criminology; David T. Hardy’s brief filed on behalf of Academics for the Second Amendment; and Charles J. Cooper on behalf of former senior officials of the Department of Justice, including former Attorneys General Edwin Meese III and William P. Barr, and Judge Robert H. Bork.
   No matter the widely divergent subject area, each brief goes to the heart of why the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns in the home, and its criminalization of home possession of any operable firearm, violates the U.S. Constitution and, therefore, should be once and for all declared unconstitutional.
   Among the most interesting views on the purpose and necessity of the Second Amendment and on the oppressive history of “gun control” are found in a series of briefs by legal scholars representing women and members of minority groups. A number of briefs should be required reading, including those filed by Southwestern Legal Foundation along with the Second Amendment Sisters and Women Against Gun Control; 126 Women State Legislators and Academics; Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership; the Pink Pistols along with Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty; the Congress of Racial Equality; and georgiacarry.org. The last two organizations chronicle the racist origins and nature of gun control.
   The views presented in those briefs represent true diversity, and they spell out the dangers of the tyranny of the majority as represented by the D.C. gun ban.