Supreme Court asserts broad gun rights

Scalia sought to address concerns by many critics – and the dissenting justices – that such a ruling might lead to an arms race among American homeowners stocking up with machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers.

“The right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” Scalia wrote. “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” he said. The opinion did not undermine laws “forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,” he said.

He added that the opinion did not undercut laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

A right to rifles and handguns only?

In addition, in the opinion’s most significant limitation, the majority justices said the Second Amendment provides a right for Americans to possess the sorts of weapons that were in common use at the time of the drafting of the amendment – meaning rifles and handguns. “We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons,’ ” Scalia said.

There are an estimated 200 million privately owned firearms in the United States, including 60 million to 65 million handguns, according to the National Rifle Association.

Guns and gun control has so far not emerged as a significant issue in the presidential campaigns. But the ruling could spark a national debate.

In May, a Harris poll found that 47 percent of Americans viewed the Second Amendment as providing an individual right, while 17 percent believed it safeguarded a collective right permitting states to form and arm militias.

The poll also found that 49 percent of US adults want stricter gun-control laws, down from 69 percent 10 years ago. Twenty percent said they want less strict gun regulations, while 21 percent favored no change.

The Supreme Court last confronted the gun rights issue 69 years ago in a 1939 case called US v. Miller. The decision in that case did not resolve a longstanding debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment and the nature of the rights it purported to protect.

The Second Amendment reads: “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.”

Many legal scholars held the view that the amendment only protected the right to keep and bear arms within the context of service in a state militia, such as the current National Guard. But other scholars said that because the amendment speaks of a right of “the people,” the provision was protecting an individual right.

‘No doubt’ of an individual’s right

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms,” Scalia said.

In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens took issue with the majority’s conclusion. “The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia,” Stevens wrote.

“The right the Court announces was not ‘enshrined’ in the Second Amendment by the Framers; it is the product of today’s law-changing decision,” he said.

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