D.C. v. Heller Revisited

A friend of mine recently sent me this article from The New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/washington/21guns.html?_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

The article presents arguments critical to Justice Scalia's majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller from the right.

The gist of the article is that the Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller is politically motivated and at odds with an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. It is an example of judicial activism on the right, the way Roe v. Wade is an example of judicial activism on the left. The argument runs that it makes a mockery of federalism by restricting the states ability to establish their own gun laws (as Roe restricts the states ability to have their own abortion laws).

Those that have read my post from April 26, 2008 (freemarkets-freeminds-freesociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/district-of-columbia-v-heller.html) will already know that I disagree with this view. I came to the same conclusion, by the same reasoning as Justice Scalia did.

Unlike Justice Scalia, who is an avid hunter (I think he's even survived hunting trips with the Vice President), I have never and will never own a gun. I don't hunt and I detest handguns. The only purpose of a handgun is to shoot a person, and I would agree no one needs one. I would favour the DC handgun ban, if I thought the Constitution allowed it. I came to the conclusion that it didn't independent of any political pro-gun agenda.

Justice Scalia's decision does not impair localities ability to regulate ownership - in the same way speech is still regulated (no profanity on publicly owned broadcasting venues, speech that incites violence isn't protected, speech that creates a danger (the old, "yelling fire in a crowded theatre,") isn't protected and slander isn't protected). In my view, there is nothing different about the right to keep and bear arms (which the framers clearly viewed as an individual right) and the right to free speech, free assembly, a free press, or freedom of religion. They are all quite explicit in the Bill of Rights. I agree with the point, later in the article, that comparing D.C. v. Heller with Roe is unfair because gun rights are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution and abortion rights are not.

I can see how some would view the decision (DC v. Heller) as activist. The idea that this decision is an assault on federalism is certainly a very originalist way of looking at the issue as the Bill of Rights was initially felt to apply only to federal law (and therefore the original interpretation to the 2nd Amendment is that the federal government shall not infringe the right to keep and bear arms - important because of the preceding clause that explains the reason: so that States will always have an armed citizenry to resist a federal standing army if necessary). Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans viewed the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, and they were, but after they were repealed there will still plenty of state sedition laws viewed completely acceptable under the Constitution that provided that only the federal government couldn't restrict speech or the press.

However, the 14th amendment changed all that. The equal protection clause mandates that those rights extend to everyone equally, in any state. So now state legislatures can't pass laws restricting free speech, free press, free assembly and so on. The argument from the right against Scalia's decision is an argument that they should be able to. In my view, if the 14th amendment extends all other rights guaranteed in the Constitution into every state and locality, it does so for second amendment rights as well, just as Scalia observed. We would not tolerate a different law with regard to free speech in New York city compared to Wichita Falls, Kansas would we? There are perhaps good reasons to have different gun laws in those two places, but the Constitution, extended to the states by the 14th amendment, forbids it.

I am not in favour of a national gun ban. I am, in priniciple, in favour of letting states and localities figure what gun laws work best for them as the critics of the Scalia decision suggest. I would be all for a constitutional amendment that restricted the second amendment to the federal government and allowed states and localities to be autonomous on this issue. But, I remain convinced that it takes an amendment to do that, and to do it without an amendment sets precedent that puts the remainder of the Bill of Rights at risk.