High Court Weakens Law on Gun Buyers

In another defeat for the Clinton administration, the Supreme Court on the final day of its term struck down part of the Brady Act that seeks to prevent criminals from buying handguns.

On a 5-4 vote, the court said Friday that Congress did not have the power to “compel” local sheriffs to conduct background checks of potential gun purchasers.

The federal government is supposed to have a “national instant background check” ready to go by December 1998. Until then, states and local law enforcement officials must rely on their own means of checking records.

The Brady Act mandates a five-day waiting period after a buyer goes to a gun dealer seeking to purchase a weapon.

California and 26 other states have their own laws and systems for checking criminal records of handgun buyers, so Friday’s ruling will probably not affect them.

In states such as Montana and Arizona, where sheriffs challenged the law, the impact is unclear. The law’s five-day waiting period still stands for gun dealers, but there may be no one available to check to see if a purchaser is an ex-felon.

President Clinton on Friday urged local police to continue to conduct the checks voluntarily.

“My goal is clear: No criminal background check, no handgun anywhere in America. No state should become a safe haven for criminals who want to buy handguns,” he said.

Since 1994, 250,000 felons, fugitives or mentally unstable people have been denied handguns because of the law, the White House said.

For its part, the Supreme Court seemed little interested in the issue of guns or the details of how the Brady Act worked.

Instead, the court’s conservative majority used the case to make another powerful statement about the “sovereignty” of the states and the limits of federal power.

Congress cannot command state or local officials “to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program,” no matter how small the burden or how worthy the cause, said Justice Antonin Scalia for the court.

Congress can get the states to do its bidding by giving them money for such projects as building highways or improving the public schools. It can pay for federal agents to patrol the borders or protect national parks. But it cannot, the court stressed, simply “conscript” local or state officials and put them to work for Washington.

“The power of the federal government would be augmented immeasurably if it were able to impress into its service--and at no cost to itself--the police officers of the 50 states,” Scalia commented.

Jay Printz, a sheriff from Ravali County, Mont., had challenged the Brady Act provision that required him to “make a reasonable effort” to see if a potential handgun buyer has a criminal record.

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Lawyers for the National Rifle Assn. supported the challenge. Rather than attack the entire law as unconstitutional, they focused on the requirement imposed on the sheriffs.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the requirement and said it put only a “minor” burden on local law enforcement.

But the high court in Printz vs. U.S., 95-1478, disagreed and voided the provision.

Scalia’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

In a concurring opinion, Thomas said there is a “colorable argument” that the Brady Act also violates the 2nd Amendment, which guarantees a right to “keep and bear arms.”

Although well-known by the public, the 2nd Amendment has been largely ignored by the Supreme Court. Its last ruling on the issue came in 1939, when it reinstated a federal prosecution of a man carrying an illegal sawed-off shotgun.

Since then, the court has rejected innumerable appeals citing the 2nd Amendment, so often that even gun enthusiasts no longer raise the issue. Thomas, who has emerged as the most conservative of the justices and the one most willing to depart from the views of his past and present colleagues, said the court should consider someday soon whether the 2nd Amendment confers “a personal right to keep and bear arms.”

Meanwhile, the four dissenters accused the majority of exaggerating the threat to the states and inventing a new constitutional rule.

Requiring a local sheriff to spend an hour or so a week checking criminal records is “a trivial burden,” Justice John Paul Stevens said.

Reading his dissent from the bench, Stevens angrily attacked Scalia’s majority opinion as a type of conservative activism.

“My brother Scalia has not found a single scrap of evidence” in the Constitution or its history to suggest Congress cannot regulate interstate commerce by putting some requirements on state officials, Stevens said.

He worried that in a national emergency or a sudden outbreak of an infectious disease, federal officials would be powerless to force quick action by state or local officials.

NRA officials praised the outcome and said the Brady Act has been an expensive failure.

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The ruling “sends a strong and very desirable signal that local law enforcement serves only one master--not politicians in Washington, D.C., but the local community,” said Tanya Metaksa, executive director of the NRA’s lobbying group.

She said the Clinton administration has spent $200 million on the Brady Act and “put three people in prison.”

President Clinton ordered officials at the Justice and Treasury departments to work on new legislation that would continue the background checks everywhere. The court’s opinion leaves open the possibility that the federal government could pay to have the checks conducted or could use its employees to do them.