Washington – The Supreme Court on Monday struck down Chicago’s strict firearm ban in a landmark decision that casts numerous state and local gun laws into question.
By 5-4, the court ruled that Chicago’s long-standing gun ban violated an individual’s right to own firearms, enshrined in the Second Amendment. The ruling marks the first time the court has determined that the Constitution restricts state and municipal gun-control powers.
“Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, adding that “individual self-defense is the central component of the Second Amendment right.”
Alito was part of the court’s 5-4 majority that struck down Washington, D.C.’s gun ban in 2008. The landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision was the first time the court ruled that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms extends to individuals, not just formal militias.
Alito’s 45-page majority opinion issued Monday, the last day of the Supreme Court’s 2009-10 term, built directly on the earlier Washington decision and emphasized throughout the traditional deference that courts and legislatures have paid to gun ownership. Alito was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
“King George III’s attempt to disarm the colonists in the 1760s and 1770s provoked polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep arms,” Alito said.
He added that for the authors of the Bill of Rights, which includes the Second Amendment, “the right to keep and bear arms was considered no less fundamental.”
The Second Amendment says that “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.
The 2008 decision was limited to federal jurisdictions, because the first 10 amendments that make up the Bill of Rights cover only the federal government.
The 14th Amendment, added after the Civil War, also declares that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Over time, the Supreme Court has determined that most of the Bill of Rights’ provisions applied to the states as well as the federal government as a result of the 14th Amendment.
The decision Monday extended this reasoning, with the court’s conservative majority declaring that the 14th Amendment makes the Second Amendment applicable to the states as well.
Writing in dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer — joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor — noted that handguns cause an estimated 60,000 deaths and injuries each year, and he cautioned that the ruling will hinder state and local efforts to control the carnage.
“Unlike other forms of substantive liberty, the carrying of arms for that purpose often puts others’ lives at risk,” Breyer warned.
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