Separate out handguns in landmark deliberations

Technically, the challenge is to a District of Columbia handgun ban. Realistically, the U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments and took under advisement a case that could have historic ramifications for the right to bear arms.

Is that right restricted to a "well regulated militia," or does it embrace private ownership by individuals? The early indication is that the justices are leaning toward the latter.

The case is known as District of Columbia v. Heller. Dick Anthony Heller is an Army veteran and security guard at a federal building in the nation's capital. Because of the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, he says he must keep his personal firearms stored outside the District and feels unsafe as a result.

It's an argument echoed often by the gun ownership side in the ongoing gun-control debate. But the case reminds us that gun control advocates also can find ammunition (no pun intended) in the Second Amendment.

As Forth Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram columnist J. R. "Jill" Labbe wrote in a November column after the court agreed to hear the case:

What makes this case different ... is that the argument is not about the firearms that people choose to bear or how they put the guns to use. Heller is about the foundational question of whether an individual right is protected.

The justices could use this case to overturn laws at state and federal levels that Second Amendment advocates argue have infringed upon the right to own and possess guns. ...

On the other hand, the court could decide that when James Madison penned, "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," he never thought it would be construed to mean that private citizens should be armed. That's what D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is hoping for.

Labbe, whose columns appear periodically on this page, is a former member of the National Rifle Association. She dropped her membership "during one national election cycle -- don't even remember which one now -- when some of the propaganda from Wayne LaPierre's ceaseless stuffing of my mailbox (with a goal of raising money for the NRA) was nothing short of Chicken Little fear mongering."

Her husband is a retired police officer who is on his third yearlong tour in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor with the State Department.

She is familiar with both sides of the gun control debate and her comments above go to the precedent-setting potential of a high court ruling when it is handed down later.

A concern we have is that
a court ruling could
overreach in ruling
on the D.C. handgun ban and find that states or the federal government can't regulate certain types of weapons. Government's regulatory authority certainly must be retained over them.

We don't see the Second Amendment as an open-end license that allows a private citizen in this modern era to have assault rifles or heavy artillery in their basements. Some weapons should be reserved for use only by the military or police.

Handguns are another issue, one the high court should separate from the overall question of regulation.

A key phrase in that short, famous Second Amendment is "a well regulated Militia." The Founding Fathers had just been on the winning side of the War of Independence in which "militia" and private citizens (the so-called Minutemen) were often one and the same. Of course, they had to be individually armed and that concern and influence obviously carried over into the drafting of the Second Amendment as part of the context of the times.

But one can't equate the militia then to United States military forces of today. The modern civilian militia of today would more properly be the National Guard, which is under jurisdiction of both the state and federal governments.

The Supreme Court has a major constitutional test in front of it. Which way will the justices go? Given the conservative bent of the nine-member panel, it's doubtful the Second Amendment will be trashed. We just don't want to see them overreact to protect individual ownership to the point of discarding needed regulation of certain types of firearms.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Sarah Jenkins and Bill Lee.