THE US Supreme Court has ended 69 years of speculation and ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution confers an individual right of Americans to own and use guns. To arrive at this decision, the court performed a grammatical parsing that would confound the best English teacher, deciding that the first 13 words are merely "prefatory" to the "operative clause" of the one-sentence amendment, thus conveniently tossing aside the importance of "a well regulated militia" to the right to bear arms.
So be it. The 5-4 decision is not a surprise from a court that routinely bends precedent to suit its ideology.
Still, no right is absolute. Even the First Amendment, beloved of editorial writers, has limits. The right to free speech can be restricted where its full expression might cause harm: libel, obscenity, incitement to riot. Similarly, the court ruled that the Second Amendment can be restricted for reasons of public safety.
The important work now is to determine what constitutes "reasonable" regulation of murderous weapons. In his ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the decision shouldn't cast doubt on "long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."
That's a pretty low bar. Even the lawyer for Dick Heller, the plaintiff in the challenge to the strict handgun ban in Washington, D.C., told the court that reasonable restrictions might also include background checks, curbs on gun ownership by minors, and a ban on machine guns. We would add limits on bulk purchases, background checks on purchasers at gun shows, and a reasonable waiting period to prevent crimes of passion.
Some Americans may feel safer owning a gun for self-defense. But guns will still kill 80 people today in homicides, suicides, or accidents. This ruling won't change that.
