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Boge Quinn
Bush Administration Backs Individual
Right to Bear Arms
Reversing the four-decade-long federal interpretation
of the Second Amendment, the Bush administration has told the Supreme
Court that it believes the Constitution protects an individual's right
to bear arms.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice said the high court
need not test that principle now.
"The current position of the United States ... is
that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals,
including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active
military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms,"
Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in two court filings this
week.
That right, however, is "subject to reasonable restrictions
designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession
of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse."
Olson, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer,
was reflecting the view of Attorney General John Ashcroft that
the Second Amendment applies to private citizens, not merely to militias,
the Associated Press reported today.
Ashcroft angered anti-gun-rights leftists when he expressed
a similar statement in a letter to the National Rifle Association last
year.
'Plain Meaning and Original Intent'
"While some have argued that the Second Amendment
guarantees only a 'collective' right of the states to maintain militias,
I believe the amendment's plain meaning and original intent prove otherwise,"
Ashcroft wrote.
In November, the attorney general sent a letter to federal
prosecutors praising an appeals court decision that found "the Second
Amendment does protect individual rights," but noting that those
rights could be subject to "limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions."
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals went on to reject
arguments from Texas physician Timothy Emerson that a 1994 federal
gun law was unconstitutional. The law was intended to deny guns to people
under restraining orders.
"In my view, the Emerson opinion, and the balance
is strikes, generally reflect the correct understanding of the Second
Amendment," Ashcroft told prosecutors.
Olson's court filing Monday urged the high court not to
get involved and acknowledged the policy change in a lengthy footnote.
Olson attached Ashcroft's letter to prosecutors.
In the second case, a man was convicted of owning two
machine guns in violation of federal law. The government also won a lower-court
decision endorsing a federal gun control law.
The cases are Emerson vs. United States, 01-8780 and Haney
vs. United States, 01-8272.
Here is the text of the Second Amendment: "A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The Supreme Court last ruled on the scope of the Second
Amendment in 1939, according to AP. The amendment protects only those
rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation
of efficiency of a well regulated militia," the court opined then.
"This action is proof positive that the worst fears
about Attorney General Ashcroft have come true his extreme ideology
on guns has now become government policy," fumed Michael D. Barnes,
president of Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the anti-gun-rights
group associated with famous
gun buyer Sarah Brady.
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