Court Finds Individual Right to Bear Arms
By The only real suspense about D.C. v. Heller was 1)how exactly the right to bear arms was defined and 2)what the lineup would be. The D.C. gun ban was clearly doomed. Scalia writing the lead opinion made a broader coalition less likely, and indeed the Court split 5-4, along typical ideological lines. And yet, based on a quick scan, Scalia’s opinion wasn’t exceptionally broad — while striking down the D.C. ban it emphasized that the reasonable regulation of gun ownership was permissible.
Stevens’s lengthy and detailed dissent, meanwhile, immediately conceded that the Second Amendment conferred an “individual” right in some sense, but argued that text and history compelled the conclusion that — given the constitutionally stated purposes of the right the D.C. gun ban was a reasonable restriction of the right. Breyer’s dissent, as you might expect, was more pragmatic, focusing on what he claims to be the reasonableness of the ban.
More on the decision later.