The man who successfully challenged a prohibition against handguns in the District of Columbia before the Supreme Court said last night during a local debate about the Second Amendment that some states have gone too far.
That's what happened in the District of Columbia, which required that firearms either be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, said Alan Gura, a lawyer from Alexandria, Va., who argued the Supreme Court case.
"If you have a right to bear arms, you have the right to bear arms that actually work," he said.
Gura debated the Second Amendment with Joseph Blocher, a professor of law at Duke University, at the law offices of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice at One West Fourth St. in Winston-Salem. Blocher helped write a brief for the District of Columbia in the Supreme Court case that Gura argued.
The debate was sponsored by the Piedmont Triad Lawyers Chapter of The Federalist Society, a nonprofit organization made up of conservatives and libertarians. About 55 people attended.
Blocher said that for hundreds of years, the courts had interpreted the Second Amendment as applying to state militias. The amendment reads: "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 courts had never ruled on whether an individual had the right to bear arms, Blocher said.
Then last year, the Supreme Court did just that. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms exists and is supported by the "historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
The decision, Blocher said, turns the usual interpretation of the Second Amendment on its head, but the problem is that the Supreme Court decision is too vague, making it almost impossible to see how the decision will play out in states across the country.
Another case that the Supreme Court is taking up may answer some of those questions, both attorneys said.
Last month, the Supreme Court said it will take up a challenge to Chicago's ban on handguns. Gura represents the plaintiff in Chicago and yesterday, just hours before the debate, he filed a brief outlining the arguments he plans to make to the Supreme Court in the case. The court is expected to make a decision sometime next year.
The central issue in the case will be whether the Second Amendment will apply to local and state laws. Currently, 44 state constitutions, including North Carolina, already protect gun rights.
Blocher said that since the country's founding, there have always been regulations on guns.
Gura said he has no problem with gun regulations. He agrees with background checks, for example.
However, while one may not like the idea of having powerful guns, owning some, including semi-automatic weapons, is constitutional, he said.
"Scary-looking weapons are protected," Gura said in reference to semi-automatic guns.
mhewlett@wsjournal.com
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