SPECIAL REPORT
By Chris W. Cox
NRA-ILA Executive Director

   Despite its vindication by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment is headed back to federal court, where its fate may be decided by judges and justices nominated and approved by the next president and the U.S. Senate.

Chris W. Cox,
NRA-ILA Executive Director

   The Court said clearly that laws banning handguns and making it a crime to have guns in operable condition at home are unconstitutional. “Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family would fail constitutional muster. ...We hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”
   Because the Court’s ruling was immediately applicable only to the District of Columbia, NRA filed suit against handgun bans in Chicago and nearby Morton Grove and Oak Park, and against San Francisco’s ban on the possession of firearms by public housing residents. Another Chicago suburb, Wilmette, abruptly repealed its handgun ban, with its village president saying, “I knew that our ordinance would not survive constitutional scrutiny.” Morton Grove repealed its ban shortly after Wilmette.
   D.C. officials had 21 days to change the city’s laws before the Court’s ruling took effect. However, instead of proceeding in good faith, they showed the same disrespect for the Court and for the Constitution’s supremacy clause as they have shown for the Second Amendment. On June 16, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty signed a bill passed unanimously by the D.C. Council, which defies the Court by leaving most of the city’s handgun ban in place and by prohibiting people from unlocking, assembling and loading a gun at home unless an attack upon them is imminent or already underway.
   Within days, D.C. police refused to register a Model 1911 to Dick Anthony Heller (plaintiff in the Heller case) and a semi-automatic .22-caliber target pistol to Absalom F. Jordan, Jr., prompting two of the nation’s top Second Amendment attorneys—Stephen Halbrook and Richard Gardiner—to file suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of the men.
   As the suit points out, D.C. refused to register Heller’s and Jordan’s pistols because a provision of the D.C. Code—entirely at odds with federal and state law—defines any semi-automatic as a “machine gun” if it can fire more than 12 shots without manual reloading. On top of that, even though the Model 1911 and .22 pistols in question have magazines of only seven and 10 rounds, respectively, D.C. is taking the position that any gun that uses a detachable magazine could use one holding 12 or more rounds.
   The suit also notes that D.C. is still not allowing people to have firearms in useable condition at home in the event of an attack by a criminal, nor to unlock and assemble firearms for cleaning, inspection or repair. And D.C. is imposing new bureaucratic hurdles to discourage people from trying to register a handgun in the first place.
   Under D.C.’s new scheme, handgun registration applicants have to pay separate, unlimited fees for filing their registration applications, having their mandatory fingerprint cards processed and having their handguns run through a ballistic testing process. And, when submitting applications, they are required to supply photographs, prove their residency in the District and prove they have adequate eyesight. And they are required to pass a written test. (A third plaintiff, Amy McVey, applied to register a revolver, and joins Heller and Jordan in challenging both the continuing restrictions on self-defense, and the many bureaucratic roadblocks to lawful gun ownership in the District.)
   Meanwhile, Chicago, Oak Park and San Francisco are holding fast to their bans, and our lawsuits against them are pending. Chicago’s mayor, Richard M. Daley, says he won’t be budged by the Supreme Court because its “frightening” ruling did not state how many guns, how much ammunition and what kinds of ammunition a person should be allowed to have, and because allowing people to have guns at home, he says, would endanger police officers and firefighters.
   Attempting to back up Daley’s position, Chicago’s top lawyer claimed that Heller doesn’t apply to Chicago because in the 19th century, the Supreme Court did not consider the Second Amendment to apply to states and cities. Of course, even the First Amendment was not considered to apply to the states in the 19th century, but it has long since been applied to the states via the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.