The District's Gun Ban Goes to Court

Domestic violence is a pervasive societal problem that affects a significant number of women and children each year. Correctly recognized as a national crisis, domestic violence accounts for a significant portion of all violence against women and children. . . . [D]omestic violence accounts for between one-third and almost one-half of the female murders in the United States. These murders are most often committed by intimate partners with handguns. And . . . batterers also use handguns to threaten, intimidate, and coerce victims.

Handguns empower batterers and provide them with deadly capabilities, exacerbating an already pervasive problem.

-- from the brief compiled by a multistate group of coalitions against domestic violence

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This case provides the Court an opportunity to advance the ability of women to free themselves from being subject to another's ill will and to counter the commonly-held prejudice that women are 'easier targets' simply because of their gender characteristics. Violence against women in the United States is endemic, often deadly, and most frequently committed by men superior in physical strength to their female victims.

The District's current prohibition against handguns and immediately serviceable firearms in the home effectively eliminates a woman's ability to defend her very life and those of her children against violent attack. Women are simply less likely to be able to thwart violence using means currently permitted under D.C. law. Women are generally less physically strong, making it less likely that most physical confrontations will end favorably for women. Women with access to immediately disabling means, however, have been proven to benefit from the equalization of strength differential a handgun provides. Women's ability to own such serviceable firearms is indeed of even greater importance given the holdings of both federal and state courts that there is no individual right to police protection. . . .

Effectively banning the possession of handguns ignores biological differences between men and women, and in fact allows gender-inspired violence free rein.

-- from the brief of 126 female legislators and academics

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Congress has historically viewed the Second Amendment as protecting from infringement the right of the people at large to keep and bear arms. It has further regarded ordinary, commonly-possessed rifles, handguns, and shotguns to be constitutionally protected arms. It has also passed regulations for engaging in firearms businesses and to require background checks on firearm transferees, and has restricted certain dangerous categories of persons from possession of firearms. None of these laws is called into question by the lower court's limited holding.

The standard for whether a right is 'fundamental' is whether it is 'explicitly or implicitly protected by the Constitution, thereby requiring strict judicial scrutiny.' The right of the people to keep arms is obviously such a right. Yet even if this Court applied a lower 'reasonableness' test as the standard of review, the District's handgun ban is unreasonable on its face. The lower court's categorical approach in holding a prohibition on handguns to be unconstitutional per se was correct.

Where Congress has sought to restrict certain firearms, some of which may have other characteristics which overlap with handguns, it has defined them in terms of specific categories. A holding by this Court that the District's pistol ban violates the Second Amendment would not apply to such firearms which are restricted under other categories.