District of Columbia v. Heller LIVE VIDEO

On Tuesday, March 18th at @11:30 am (ET), hear the Supreme Court oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller, a gun law case. The Court will decide if individual handgun ownership falls within "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

UPDATE: 03/18/08

• Supreme Court Oral Argument: D.C. v. Heller (March 18, 2008), audio in real media format, running time 1:37:50
• Supreme Court Briefs to District of Columbia v. Heller Merits briefs, Amicus briefs.

LIVE C-SPAN VIDEO REAL MEDIA and in WINDOWS MEDIA FORMAT

U.S. SUPREME COURT AGREES TO C-SPAN’S REQUEST FOR SAME-DAY RELEASE OF ORAL ARGUMENT IN UPCOMING FIREARMS CASE Chief Justice Roberts Approves Immediate Release of Oral Argument in PDF Format.

District of Columbia v. Heller From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007) is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit became the first federal appeals court in the United States to strike down a firearm ban for reasons based on the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and the second to interpret the Second Amendment explicitly as protecting an individual right to firearms for private use. The first federal case that interpreted the Amendment as providing protection of an individual right was United States v. Emerson (5th Cir. 2001).

In 2003, six residents of Washington D.C. (Shelly Parker, Tom Palmer, Gillian St. Lawrence, Tracey Ambeau, George Lyon and Dick Heller) filed a federal court challenge to the District's gun ban. The resulting 2-1 decision in Parker struck down parts of the District of Columbia Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, which is a local law enacted pursuant to District of Columbia home rule. The law is controversial because it limited the ability of residents to own side arms (excluding those grandfathered in by registration prior to 1975). This law restricted residents, except active and retired law enforcement officers, from owning handguns. The law also requires that all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock". The District argues that there is an implicit self-defense exception to the storage provisions, but the D.C. Circuit rejected this view, saying that the requirement amounted to a complete ban on functional firearms and prohibition on use for self-defense.

In April 2007, the District and Mayor Adrian Fenty petitioned for a rehearing from the full court of appeals on the grounds that the ruling creates inter- and intra-jurisdictional conflict. On May 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the request to rehear the case, by a 6-4 vote. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and oral argument will take place on March 18, 2008. The case is pending under the name District of Columbia v. Heller.

Supreme Court review

Both the defendants and the plaintiffs petitioned the United States Supreme Court to hear the case. The questions posed for review by the petitioner (the District of Columbia) differed significantly from those posed by the respondent (Heller). The District of Columbia's petition stated that the question presented was, "Whether the Second Amendment forbids the District of Columbia from banning private possession of handguns while allowing possession of rifles and shotguns." Heller replied that the question was broader, to wit, "Whether the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding, adult individuals a right to keep ordinary, functional firearms, including handguns, in their homes." As discussed below, the Supreme Court adopted neither question, but came closer to the question posed by Heller in framing the question to include review of the District's prohibitions against possession of all types of firearms, and not just handguns.

On September 4, 2007, the District of Columbia and Mayor Fenty petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a portion of the lower court's ruling. The Washington Post noted that most legal experts believed the Supreme Court would likely accept the case. Now that the Court has granted certiorari, this will likely be the first time since the 1939 case United States v. Miller that the Supreme Court has directly addressed the scope of the Second Amendment.

On September 10, 2007, five of the original plaintiffs in the case cross-petitioned the Supreme Court to reinstate their legal claims against the District. The appellate court ruling held that of the original six plaintiffs, only Heller had the necessary standing to challenge the law. The five plaintiffs other than Heller now ask that the court restore their case against the district.

On November 20, 2007, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The court has rephrased the question to be decided as follows:

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to the following question: Whether the following provisions, D.C. Code §§ 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02, violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case on March 18, 2008, and is expected to publish its decision in the summer of 2008. The audiotapes of the oral argument will be published on the same day as the hearing. Each side will receive 30 minutes to argue its case, and U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement will receive 15 minutes to present the federal government's views.

Summary of the D.C. Circuit's decision

The Court first addresses whether appellants have standing to sue for declaratory and injunctive relief in section II (slip op. at 5–12). The Court concludes that Heller (who applied for a handgun permit but was denied) has standing.
“ Essentially, the appellants claim a right to possess what they describe as "functional firearms", by which they mean ones that could be "readily accessible to be used effectively when necessary" for self-defense in the home. They are not asserting a right to carry such weapons outside their homes. Nor are they challenging the District's authority per se to require the registration of firearms.[9] ”

The Court's summary of its substantive ruling on the right protected by the second amendment is given on page 46 of the slip opinion (at the end of section III):

“To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.”

The Court concluded:

“Once it is determined - as we have done - that handguns are 'Arms' referred to in the Second Amendment, it is not open to the District to ban them ... That is not to suggest that the government is absolutely barred from regulating the use and ownership of pistols. The protections of the Second Amendment are subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment.”

Summary of dissent

In dissent, Judge Henderson wrote:

“To sum up, there is no dispute that the Constitution, case law and applicable statutes all establish that the District is not a State within the meaning of the Second Amendment. Under United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. at 178, the Second Amendment's declaration and guarantee that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" relates to the Militia of the States only. That the Second Amendment does not apply to the District, then, is, to me, an unavoidable conclusion.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, District of Columbia v. Heller

Tags: District of Columbia v. Heller and Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or The Right to Bear Arms and the Supreme Court