Does the second amendment apply to D.C.?

ITEM: "Plagued by high homicide rates," said the Associated Press on July 16, "officials in the U.S. capital said Monday they will petition the Supreme Court as they seek to defend Washington's 30-year-old ban on most handguns." The wire-service story continued: "'We have made the determination that this law can and should be defended,' Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said in a statement Monday. 'The handgun ban in the District of Columbia has saved many lives since then and will continue to do so if it remains enforced,' he added. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said 75 of Washington's 97 homicides this year were committed with firearms."

ITEM: The Washington Post for July 19 said the decision to seek a Supreme Court review of a court opinion that struck down the District's stringent gun-control laws was "fraught with risk." Editorialized the paper: "As a matter of public safety and public policy, we support the District's gun control regime. We believe that compelling public safety concerns allow regulation of weapons even if a right to bear arms is recognized. But the D.C. Circuit's decision, written by Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman, is not without merit--and that's where the risk comes in. The idea that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right to bear arms is not exclusive to right-wing gun nuts, as adversaries sometimes call them. Some of the brightest liberal minds in the legal community have come--albeit reluctantly--to the same conclusion."

The Post urged the Supreme Court "to balance constitutional principles with modern-day realities."

CORRECTION: In striking down the gun laws in the District of Columbia, the most pertinent point--as recognized by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, if not by the mayor of the District of Columbia or the Washington Post--is that this ban against gun ownership and self-defense is plainly unconstitutional. Moreover, the prohibition has clearly not kept guns out of the hands of criminals, nor has it made the citizens of the federal district safer.

The Post now says it wants the Supreme Court to "balance" constitutional principles about the Second Amendment with today's "realities." Now, that's not what you would call a firm principle. One doesn't have to wonder too hard what the Post would say about the First Amendment if the government, in an effort to balance the rights of readers with a campaign against the spread of feeble-mindedness, decided it would shut down the newspaper.

In a landmark decision in March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the gun-control laws imposed by the City Council in the mid-1970s violated the U.S. Constitution. District citizens have been outlawed from possessing handguns not registered with the police before September 1976, and prevented from legally using a firearm for protection in the home by requiring that they be "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device."

Here are some highlights of the appellate ruling, in which the court held that the Second Amendment protects the individual fight of the named plaintiff (Shelly Parker) to own a firearm, and that her rights had been infringed. The court's reasoning dismayed those who have maintained that the Second Amendment is archaic or refers only to a collective right of the states to maintain militias.

For example, wrote Judge Laurence Silberman for the Court:

* In the Second Amendment, "the most important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the holders of the right, 'the people.' That term is found in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has never been doubted that these provisions were designed to protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion, interference, or usurpation." (Emphasis in original.)

* "In sum, the phrase 'the right of the people,' when read intratextually and in light of Supreme Court precedent, leads us to conclude that the right in question is individual."

* "The Amendment does not protect 'the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms,' but rather 'the right of the people.'"

* The Second Amendment, said the court, "protects an individual fight to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was 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)."

Should the Supreme Court take this case, as many legal analysts think likely, the results might shake many long-held foundations of accepted left-wing wisdom.

Some liberals have already taken a new stance. Laurence Tribe, a well-known law professor at Harvard, a few years ago discovered that the Second Amendment does indeed protect an individual right. "My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise," he told the New York Times. "I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control."

Another liberal authority, Benjamin Wittes, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington who opposes gun ownership, says the Second Amendment needs to be repealed (though admitting that is unlikely to happen). "The Second Amendment is one of the clearest statements of rights in the Constitution," he has acknowledged. "We have had decades of sort of intellectual gymnastics to try to make those words not mean what they say."

Meanwhile, of course, the honest citizens of D.C. are suffering because their government has made them easy prey for criminals. Crooks may be law-breakers and they may not care about people in general, but they're not stupid and they don't want to risk dying to steal a bit of cash. A study by the Justice Department found, unsurprisingly, that 40 percent of felons said they had decided against committing one or more crimes because they feared that the potential victim might be armed.

The District of Columbia, cited repeatedly as the murder capital of the country, last year declared yet again that it was suffering from a "crime emergency." Finding themselves in a hole, however, D.C. political leaders refuse to stop digging.

In the Nashville Tennessean, Chris Cox (executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action) writes: "Within 15 years after D.C. banned handguns, its murder rate tripled. Since 1988, its murder rate has been the highest among major U.S. cities every year but three. Across the Potomac in Virginia, where handguns can be legally carried for protection against criminals in most places, violent crime is a fraction of what it is in D.C."

An armed citizenry capable of defending itself will reduce crime, as shown by studies, common sense, and experience. In recent years, points out Cox,

   The federal "assault weapon" ban
   and waiting period on handgun sales
   have expired. States have eliminated
   waiting periods and purchase-permit
   schemes and implemented laws
   preventing local jurisdictions from
   imposing more gun control than the
   state legislature. The number of states
   in which people can legally carry firearms
   for protection has risen to 40, an
   all-time high.

   The number of guns owned by
   Americans has risen more than 4 million
   annually to well over 200 million,
   another all-time high. The number
   of gun owners has also risen to
   an all-time high, approaching 80 million.
   At the same time, the nation's
   violent crime rate has decreased 38
   percent. The murder rate, in particular,
   has dropped 43 percent.

In D.C., however, even as violence is on the upswing, the authorities can only spuriously claim that crime rates would be even worse absent their unconstitutional gun restrictions. Such liberals would prefer that Washingtonians be armed with fallacious reasoning rather than a fully loaded firearm. For this feckless inanity, there are undoubtedly many grateful criminals.