An Appeal on Weapons

The District makes a risky but necessary attempt to preserve its gun control laws.

THE DISTRICT'S decision this week to seek Supreme Court review of a court opinion striking down its gun control laws is fraught with risk, but it's a risk that the District was right to take.

The city is challenging an opinion issued in March by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that declared unconstitutional its ban on handguns and its requirement that so-called long guns be kept disassembled or with trigger locks in place. Critics point to the District's laws as among the most restrictive in the country; the appeals court concluded that they violate an individual right -- as opposed to the right of a state, for example -- to "keep and bear arms" under the Second Amendment.

As a matter of public safety and public policy, we support the District's gun control regime. We believe that compelling public safety concerns allow regulation of weapons even if a right to bear arms is recognized.

But the D.C. Circuit's decision, written by Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman, is not without merit -- and that's where the risk comes in. The idea that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right to bear arms is not exclusive to right-wing gun nuts, as adversaries sometimes call them. Some of the brightest liberal minds in the legal community have come -- albeit reluctantly -- to the same conclusion.

Many legal scholars believe that the Supreme Court will hear the matter during its upcoming term, starting in October. The justices could read the case narrowly and render a decision applicable only to the District; they could, on the other hand, read it more broadly to deliver an opinion applicable across the country. In either case, we would urge them to balance constitutional principles with modern-day realities. Law enforcement officials across the country have testified to the importance of gun control in keeping violent crime at bay. Virtually every right guaranteed by the Constitution -- from the right of free speech to the right of assembly -- has been found to have limits. An individual right to bear arms, if recognized, should be treated no differently.