In 2003, six residents of Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit in their local district court challenging the constitutionality of the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975.
Passed by the District of Columbia city council in 1976, the law banned residents of our nation’s capitol from owning handguns registered after February 1977 and said any firearm kept in the home must be "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device." Essentially, the district denied its citizens the right to keep a functional gun in their private homes.
The district court dismissed the lawsuit and it moved to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which in turn reversed the dismissal in a 2-1 decision. In doing so, the panel of three judges struck down provisions of the FCRA as unconstitutional, saying "the Second Amendment protects an individual’s 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)."
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in November 2007, and in March it heard the arguments of both sides. Their decision is expected later this month.
Is banning private ownership of firearms the answer to the U.S.’s crime problem? No. Since the district imposed the FCRA, it has earned the dubious honor of the murder capital of the U.S. In fact, the district’s murder rate, which had been declining before 1976, rose 200 percent between 1976 and 1991.
Furthermore, if we accept the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), ultimate sovereignty lies in the individual rather than with the state. If we take away the law-abiding citizen’s right to possess a ready-to-use firearm, this implies the federal government does not trust the law-abiding citizen to defend himself.
If one’s life is in immediate danger, one does not always have the time to assemble your gun, let alone wait for the proper authorities to arrive. Even if the authorities do arrive on time, I do not always place my full faith in this country’s law-enforcement practices.
Regulation is not always the best way to go when attempting to control morally ambiguous items. It is obvious that the war on drugs has been a terrible fiasco. Intense regulation is usually followed by an equally intense black market; recall the Reagan-era drug policy (as well as Clinton’s drug policy).
Ultimately this is a civil liberties issue. I am not a "gun-nut" (although nothing is more cathartic than obliterating a steel barrel with an AK-47) but it seems to make intuitive sense that a ban on handguns devalues the individual by limiting one’s natural right to defend oneself. To quote John Adams, "Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would."
Watkins, a philosophy senior, can be reached via [email protected].
