Legal News

Battle Lines Forming In Gun-Control Case

By Nathan Koppel

In a few months time, the Supreme Court will revisit the Second Amendment in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which challenges a gun-control ordinance in the city.

Not surprisingly, the case is attracting heavy interest around the country.

The Sacramento Bee today reports that Sacramento's City Council has voted to join other cities arguing in support of Chicago's right to regulate the posssesion and use of firearms.

Other cities invited to file briefs supporting Chicago include Baltimore, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

Sacramento City councilman Kevin McCarty, who supports the city's involvement in the case, told the Bee that guns "are most likely to be used by assailants or people who shouldn't have guns in the first place."

But there is plenty of firepower on the other side of the case.

Many states, including Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have filed an amicus brief arguing that Chicago's handgun ban is unconstitutional.Here's a link to that brief.

At issue in the McDonald case is whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to states.

In D.C. v. Heller, the Supremes a few terms back ruled that Washington, D.C.'s gun-control ordinance violated the Constitution, but that ruling dealt with a federal statute, not state law. Several courts, including the Seventh Circuit in the McDonald case, have since ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states.

To get at whether the Second Amendment binds states and localities may require a parsing of the 14th Amendment's Privileges and Immunities Clause, namely whether the right to bear arms is a privilege that can not be abridged by states.

This is our heretofore most recent post on the case, and here’s a good overview of the constitutional issues in play from WSJ's Jess Bravin.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 28, 2009 (boomark / email).