Yes, the Second Amendment Guarantees an Individual Right to Bear Arms

On March 9, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a groundbreaking ruling. It declared in a 2-1 decision that the Washington, D.C. ban on handgun possession in private homes, in effect since 1976, is unconstitutional. The court reached this conclusion after stating unequivocally that the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals and not just "the militia."

It is quite likely that this ruling will be appealed to Supreme Court, which hasn't offered an interpretation of the Second Amendment since 1939.

Appalled by the District Court ruling, the Washington Post editorialized that it will "give a new and dangerous meaning to the Second Amendment" that, if applied nationally, could imperil "every gun control law on the books."

The Post accused the National Rifle Association and the Bush administration's Justice Department of trying "to broadly reinterpret the Constitution so as to give individuals Second Amendment rights."

But actually, to argue that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals is a reinterpretation of the Constitution and the original intent of the founders.

Pierre Atlas

I think imperiling every gun control law on the books sounds very good. Every single one of them is flagrantly unconstitutional. If I want to park a howitzer on my lawn, the government has no business telling me I can't.

I can see how the liberals at the Washington Post are terrified of the precedent this could set. Their paper-thin arguments and semantic hair-splitting cannot possibly stand up to any rational scrutiny. Only in the dishonest world of lawyers and their double-speak is it possible to argue that the founders had any other intention than to allow individuals to keep and bear arms.