D.C. gun ban bites the dust

A U.S. appeals court on Friday struck down a strict ban on owning firearms in the nation’s capital, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to rule on the scope of the 2nd Amendment and whether it expressly protects a person’s right to own a gun.

Lawyers on both sides of the gun-control debate called the decision significant: It was the first time a federal appeals court has voided a gun law on the basis of the 2nd Amendment, they said.

For that reason, the case is expected to reach the nation’s highest court.

If the justices were to agree with the lower court, the ruling would not likely sweep aside the many laws that regulate guns and gun ownership. However, it could cast doubt on measures that forbid law-abiding residents from possessing a weapon.

Although the 2nd Amendment is among the best known provisions of the Constitution, it has had remarkably little effect on the law.

Gun owners, led by the National Rifle Assn., have spotlighted the amendment’s reference to “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” in waging political battles against efforts to limit the availability of weapons.

But in the Supreme Court’s only major ruling that interpreted the amendment, it focused on the measure’s opening words, which speak of “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.”

In upholding a federal law against transporting machine guns across state lines, the justices dismissed the 2nd Amendment as being concerned only with “the preservation of ... a well regulated militia.”

Friday’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia may cause the justices to reconsider that conclusion. Breaking with precedent, the 2-1 decision said the government may not forbid residents from owning “functional firearms” for self-defense at home.

The District of Columbia law barred virtually all of the city’s residents from keeping in their homes handguns that had not been registered before 1976. Exceptions were made for active-duty and retired police officers.

The majority opinion by Judge Laurence H. Silberman said: “Once we have determined -- as we have done -- that handguns are ‘arms’ referred to in the 2nd Amendment, it is not open to the District to ban them.”

He added that this interpretation would not prevent cities, states or federal authorities from imposing “reasonable regulations” on gun ownership and possession.

A leading gun-control advocate denounced the ruling as “judicial activism at its worst.”

“By disregarding nearly 70 years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent, two federal judges have negated the democratically expressed will of the people of the District of Columbia,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

John Snyder, a spokesman for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said the decision was a first step toward correcting an “erroneous interpretation of part of our Bill of Rights.”

The Washington ordinance that was struck down was among the nation’s most restrictive -- since only police officers and retired officers were allowed permits for a weapon.

“It basically forbids everyone from having a gun,” said Nelson Lund, a law professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. New York and Chicago have similarly restrictive measures, he said.

In California, handgun owners must register the weapons with the state.

Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said he was “deeply disappointed and, quite frankly, outraged” by the decision. He vowed to appeal it.

The meaning of the 2nd Amendment has been fiercely debated for decades. Some scholars say it was intended to protect the community’s right to defend itself with a local militia, which provided the nation much of its protection in its early days.

These scholars say the words “keep and bear arms” referred to an organized military unit, not individuals acting on their own.

Conservative scholars have attacked that view. They argue that in the colonial era, Americans believed they had a right to protect themselves and their homes with a gun.

Six years ago, then-U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft shifted the federal government’s long-standing position on the 2nd Amendment. He adopted the view that gun ownership rights for individuals were protected by the Constitution.

Since then, advocates of gun rights have been looking for a test case to bring the 2nd Amendment issue before the Supreme Court.

The challenge came before a staunchly conservative court.

Silberman is a close friend of Vice President Dick Cheney. Three years ago, the White House chose him to co-chair a panel that examined the failure to find the expected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the U.S. invasion.

Judge Thomas B. Griffith, nominated by President Bush in 2004 and confirmed by the Senate the next year, joined Silberman’s opinion.

The third member of the panel, Judge Karen L. Henderson, dissented. She argued that the high court had made clear the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect a “well regulated militia,” not individuals who want guns for their own uses.

She was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.

david.savage@latimes.com