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The Supreme Court should agree to hear District of Columbia v. Heller and uphold the majority opinion of the federal appeals court.
Heller presents the Supreme Court with a clear choice as to whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms or a collective right of states to have a militia. Judge Laurence Silberman's opinion for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit presents a strong case for individual rights.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has already stated that whenever "the people" is mentioned in the Bill of Rights that it refers to the same "class of persons." So if "the people" in the Second Amendment doesn't refer to all of the people, then it doesn't in the First or Fourth Amendments either.
In the USA, the people are the sovereigns. They are the "We the People" who established and ordained the government, and they were expected to own firearms in the defense of their free society. More than that, people were required by the legislatures to own and possess firearms.
Those who would claim that the National Guard fulfills this function in modern society are forgetting that the Guard is ultimately controlled by the federal government, rather than We the People.
One of Washington's principal arguments for its gun ban is that it's needed as a crime-fighting tool. Say what? In 2005, FBI data reported a murder rate there of 35 per 100,000 residents. Compare that with the nearby suburban county of Fairfax, Va. (with nearly twice the population — and the traffic); the murder rate there was 0.3 per 100,000.
John Lott, senior research scientist at the University of Maryland and author of More Guns, Less Crime, has shown through his massive analysis of crime data, for each county throughout the country, that laws that encourage folks to carry concealed weapons lower crime. Washington's crime will come under control when its citizens are able to defend themselves with guns.
The district already has an effective crime-fighting tool if it will use it — the Second Amendment.
Larry Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America.
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