Supreme Court Strikes Down DC Handgun Ban

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democratic Congresswoman representing the District of Columbia.

JUAN GONZALES: In a historic ruling Thursday the Supreme Court voted that the Second Amendment enshrines the constitutional right of an individual to own and keep a loaded handgun at home for purposes of self-defense. The 5-4 decision to overturn the 32-year old ban on handguns in the nation’s capital is the court’s most significant ruling on the Second Amendment since 1939.

In his majority opinion Justice Scalia said that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” as enshrined in the Second Amendment applied not only to the “well regulated militia” mentioned in the amendment, but also to individuals. He added, “It is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

The dissenting justices strongly disagreed and called the decision “a dramatic upheaval in the law.” Justice Breyer wrote “the decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States.”

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush welcomed the ruling, as did Senator John McCain, and Senator Barak Obama. The National Rifle Association applauded the ruling and said it marked QUOTE “a great moment in American history.” The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence criticized the decision and argued that it would “embolden criminal defendants, and ideological extremists, to file new legal attacks on existing gun laws.”

The ruling has also met with widespread criticism from lawmakers and the mayors of Washington, DC and Chicago.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Eleanor Holmes Norton represents the District of Columbia. She is speaking out about this decision and joins us now from Washington, DC. Welcome to Democracy Now!

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Good morning. Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. To start, can you responding to this ruling?

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: The ruling, I suppose, has very bad news and very good news. The good news is, for those who expected the worst, it could’ve been worse. First of all, it was narrow, 5- 4. The wording left a lot of room still to regulate guns. The rulings holding amounts to three things. You can have a handgun in your home to be used only for self-defense. That means people shouldn’t go out and think they can have a gun and shoot it. If you were to and shoot it and it was not for used for self-defense, for example, it would not come under the court’s decision. Moreover, it does not mean it is an individual’s right to have a gun, it is the right to have a handgun in your home and used in self-defense. It could have been worse. The bad news is no handgun in your home is going to remain in your home. These handguns—first of all, handguns in the home, according to the data, are used primarily for suicides and for friend to friend domestic violence. There are used or not particularly used, because she’s a cause you to accidents. Imagine people sitting in their houses getting a jump on the criminal. Most of the criminals in the District of Columbia do not enter houses when they think people are at home in the first place. In many ways, the decision was a huge stretch, a stretch around the Second Amendment itself because the Second Amendment stars saying exactly what it is about. It was about a country that was very afraid that creating a central government which would have an army, would leave the states disempowered to, in fact, handle themselves. The states were sure that these militias could always be armed. This court, which calls itself a conservative, strict constructionist court, simply reached around that, called it a preamble and said the use of the words “militia” and “people” was about individual rights. When you look at all of the amendments, six other amendments, the word “people” is used, it is referring collectively, usually to the states.

JUAN GONZALES: Congresswoman Holmes Norton, unfortunately, both political parties, it appears, as well as the two top Presidential candidates, in their platforms and their pronouncements, supported the court’s interpretation apparently.

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Certainly not the court’s interpretation. Both political parties—I don’t know what you mean by political parties, I was not aware there is anything in the democratic platform about the Second Amendment. I can say to you the district gun law was consistent with the Second Amendment. It was the right to have a gun in your home. It had to be unloaded, it had to be a gun used for hunting. Even we have the strictest gun laws have never said an individual could not own a gun. In fact, what the gun radicals are saying is that there should be no regulation and the Second Amendment is like the First Amendment. It should be absolute, or absolute. At least the court said it wasn’t absolute. If the district is doing its homework, and I assure you is, it will proceed to write very, very strict gun laws, which I think can be consistent with this decision.

JUAN GONZALES: It did state, though—it allows states and jurisdictions to continue to have restrictions or regulations for the sale and possession of handguns, correct?

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: That is very important question. Yes, for example, it said that the licensing requirements, registration requirements, could in fact be used. So that the district could say that everybody in fact had to register guns. It could have restrictions on who could own a gun. I would hope the district would not say that anyone over 18 should own a gun, not in this town, and I must say in major cities across the united states. Where the greatest upsurge in gun violence has been among teenagers. I would hope they would say, at least 21. The decision said that, our law saying that guns had to have trigger locks on them left open the notion about trigger locks. It didn’t not say that the gun cannot be required to have a trigger lock, is said you had to be able to have a loaded gun in your house. The problem with all of this is having a loaded gun in your home, according to all the experience, means that that gun will be used precisely the opposite way that the decision interprets. It says it is supposed to be used for self-defense. What is the experience? The experience is someone gets mad, knows he has a gun, goes out and gets it. We think the gun will find their ways into the streets. Somebody will say, “I’m going to go in my house, I’m supposed to keep it in my house. I don’t think about the law.” He’s going to bring it out. He is having a dispute with his neighbor. We now have a huge new pool of guns, unless we write very, very strict regulations. I believe the job of the district and other cities who have gun laws as strict as ours is to write regulations as strict as they possibly can, consistent with this decision. I think there are very, very strict gun laws that can now be written. And we shouldn’t hedge on it at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Senator Obama responded saying today’s decision reinforces if we act responsibly, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe. Your response?

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: I believe he must be saying, if we act responsibly with the required regulations.

AMY GOODMAN: He supported the decision.

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Yes, he supported the decision, and I regret that. I think essentially what is trying to do is say – I’ve always had this right, a Second Amendment right. He is from Chicago. A law of Obama’s Chicago, of Mayor Daly’s Chicago, is in many ways, like ours so that it now it is being challenged. It probably will fall behind this decision. I think, and even predicted that neither candidate would try to make a big issue out of this decision. They’re both essentially trying to appeal to independents because neither the Democrats or Republicans decide Presidential contests anymore and have not for at least 25 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, I want to ask you one last question on the position of Barack Obama and a Supreme Court decision and that is the one the Supreme Court ruling the death penalty could not be applied to child rapists. Senator Obama disagreed with this decision. Though he has opposed the death penalty before. In this case, he said—I think the rape of a small child six or eight years old is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow limited well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our constitution. Your response?

REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Well, since they have the last word, they say it does not violate the Constitution. If I were Barak Obama, who has the same position, I thought, on the Death Penalty, as I do, and the Supreme Court ruled in that way, I would have to concede that is now the law of the land and regret it. I think the Supreme Court has increasingly seen how isolated we are in having a death penalty, especially death penalty—at all, but especially the death penalty that takes in so many crimes. For those of us who oppose the death penalty as I thought senator Obama did, we are quick to recognize the rule of law, but I do not see how you can say anything different from what the court said. The court said that the death penalty is used when when the crime is essentially a crime against the state for the worst crimes. Many of these, rapes, they’re terrible, terrible things, in this case, a rape within the family, the notion of shaving your decision in this way, it seems to me, should be done very carefully. In my case, I would have to recognize what the court said, I do not agree with it and gone on. I understand he is in the middle of a campaign and does not want to make a big issue of it. I regret that it looks like he’s changing his position.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Eleanor Holmes Norton, we thank you for being with us. Congress member Eleanor Holmes Norton, she represents the District of Columbia. This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’ll be back in a moment.

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