The Second Amendment Under Fire

On March 18, 2008, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in District of Columbia vs. Heller. A decision is expected before the current Court's term ends in June.

For the first time in almost 70 years, the Court will issue a ruling that may limit the powers of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Second's guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms, and indirectly all freedoms preserved by the Bill of Rights, will be on the line.

Richard Heller is a resident of Washington DC whose 2003 request for a permit to own a handgun was denied. A DC law prohibits all residents except active and retired law enforcement officers from owning handguns. Anyone may own a long gun if it's kept unloaded, disassembled, or equipped with a trigger lock. Heller and six others petitioned the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The District Court refused to hear the case. In 2007, the US Court Of Appeals for DC reversed the dismissal and ruled for Heller. It became the first federal court to declare a handgun ban in violation of the Second Amendment's protection of the right to own firearms.

Both sides petitioned the US Supreme Court. The District asked "whether the Second Amendment forbids the District of Columbia from banning private possession of handguns while allowing possession of rifles and shotguns." Heller, the only original petitioner allowed to proceed, asked "whether the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding, adult individuals a right to keep ordinary, functional firearms, including handguns, in their homes."

My father shot at rabbits and squirrels in the Illinois countryside where he grew up. He was a Navy man, but his 1940 Bluejackets Manual, that I still have, tells me that sailors also learned how to use small arms. He never saw the need for us kids to do so. I've still never fired a gun or even held one, and don't feel as if I've missed out on anything.

District of Columbia vs. Heller is still important to me.

If it's okay to own a gun unless the government says you can't, there is no Second Amendment.

If the DC handgun ban is upheld -- if a precedent is set and the Second Amendment is compromised -- any of the Amendments that make up the Bill of Rights could be next. The remaining freedom we Americans have to do things we've taken for granted all our lives might disappear like a pool of water on a hot day.

I could be taking pictures for an article, of a bridge or public building or simply the main street of a town, and along could come a big guy in a brown uniform, with a shaved head and muscles all over him. He might not even bother to ask me what I'm doing. He might just tell me to leave. No reason. "Because I said so" is all he would need. I've heard and read stories. It's already happened, in more paranoid parts of the country.

That isn't America. It's the place where the Three Stooges were sent to take pictures, where you couldn't take pictures. ("You shoot picture - then vee shoot you!")

Yes, I'm being silly - but sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

We all have lists of things we used to do that we can't anymore. New ones come along all the time. Port Huron/Sarnia has been for years one metropolitan area -- although a small one -- but with an international border down the middle. No one on either side could see the time when, after a day of shopping or visiting relatives, they'd need a passport to return home.

District of Columbia vs. Heller will be an indicator of how long the list gets, and how soon.