“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,” states the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. Over most of the years since it was written, this has been widely seen as a statement of collective rights in support of such entities as the National Guard and the Armed Forces, but for the last few decades the cry for individual rights in the arena of keeping and bearing arms has been increasingly louder.
In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided with the individual, and took it a step further. Not only does one have the right to keep and bear arms as part of a militia force, but also as an individual, “premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad).”
Earlier this year, in March to be more precise, the U.S. Supreme Court conducted a hearing on this case, and rendered a decision in late June. The U.S. Supreme Court has never before directly addressed the issue of collective rights versus individual rights in regard to the Second Amendment. The court held that the Second Amendment is, indeed, protecting an individual’s right to possess a firearm for private use.
Mind that this is all in regard to a case in the District of Columbia, and not in one of the fifty United States, so there are some arguments regarding how this will or will not translate elsewhere. The US Conference of Mayors filed an amicus brief, as a friend of the court, not as a party directly involved in the case, supporting the Washington, D.C. position on gun control and banning within the city. The brief was supported directly by the cities of Baltimore, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and Trenton, which gives some idea of which states to watch in the future for the most strenuous resistance to a spreading of this U.S. Supreme Court decision.
But perhaps there is a way for everyone to have their cake, and eat it too. Maybe it is not all gun owners that should be paying the price for those who allow their guns, either purposefully or accidentally, to end up in the hands of violent criminals. Perhaps the law should also more directly reflect the underlying responsibility for the deaths of gun violence in America. It may be that what we need are more strenuous eye-for-an-eye laws that allow modern forensics to link guns used in crimes with the original source, and hold that source every bit as responsible for the outcome as the direct perpetrator. I think with laws like that on the books we may notice a great reduction in individual gun ownership, as well as a more responsible citizenry connected with it as well.