WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court stepped squarely back into the culture wars Tuesday by agreeing to hear a high-profile gun-ban case that may make firearm ownership a key issue in the upcoming election year.
At stake is a law that prohibits residents of Washington from owning handguns. The justices will decide sometime next spring whether such a ban violates the Constitution. If they rule that way, it eventually could spell trouble for gun bans in other cities.
Tuesday’s move left gun-rights activists euphoric.
“I’m on cloud nine,” said Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation.
While gun-control advocates were hardly pleased, they were consoled that the court could rule in a relatively narrow way. Only the right to own a handgun in the home will be addressed, not restrictions on assault rifles or concealed weapons.
Thomas Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said that while his group supports the right of local governments to limit handguns in the home, its primary concern rests with prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons in public.
“I’m not ready to say it’s a setback,” Mannard said.
Moreover, any decision will apply only to the federal government and not laws passed by states and cities because the District of Columbia is a federal entity.
Even so, the court has not ruled on the scope of the Second Amendment since 1939, and the timing might be right for gun-rights supporters, given the court’s conservative drift.
A favorable ruling would be “the building block we’ve been fighting (to get) for 30 years,” Gottlieb said.
Last spring, the federal appeals court in Washington struck down the District of Columbia’s 30-year-old handgun ban, moving the city’s government to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The decision to appeal troubled many gun-control supporters, who fear the case would provide the unstoppable legal weapon that activists such as Gottlieb have sought.
But lawyers for the city and Mayor Adrian Fenty said they had no choice but to seek an appeal, saying their responsibility was to the city, not the nation as a whole.
“At a minimum, I think a favorable decision would mean that people have a right to keep functional firearms, including handguns, shotguns, and rifles, in their homes for self-defense,” said Clark Neily, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs fighting Washington’s gun ban.
