The District's Gun Ban Goes to Court

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The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department has failed to provide adequate police services to the District of Columbia's citizens. The District is consistently a national leader in various crime categories while simultaneously demonstrating inability to adapt or change under the crippling bureaucracy endemic to the District. Compounding this deadly combination of high crime and inflexibility are constant examples of corruption, incompetence and outright misfeasance in the operation of the department. . . . Since the 30-plus year old implementation of what amounts to a complete ban on owning, carrying or using firearms for self-defense, the MPD has cycled through new chiefs and precinct commanders with depressing frequency. The only constant within the department has been the incompetence, corruption, cronyism and failure to perform the most basic duty of a police department -- to protect and serve.

The jaded citizens of the District have essentially given up on the police and the administration, resigning themselves to living as victims -- or as outlaws, for those who choose to defend themselves despite the D.C. Gun Ban. The unavoidable result of the D.C. Gun Ban is that it is the victims, not the criminals, who are disarmed and rendered helpless.

-- from the brief of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation and a variety of private investigation services

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Laws that prevent the use of firearms for self-defense in one's own home disproportionately impact those individuals who are targets of hate violence due to their minority status, whether defined by race, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristic. Even in their homes, LGBT individuals are at risk of murder, aggravated assault and other forms of hate violence because of their sexual orientation. In fact, the home is the most common site of anti-gay violence. Thus, for certain [lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered] individuals, the possession of firearms in the home is essential for a sense of personal security -- a fact generally lost in the majoritarian debate about restricting individual's access to, and use of, firearms. . . . [N]ot only do members of the LGBT community have a heightened need to possess firearms for self-protection in their homes, the Second Amendment clearly guarantees this most basic right. . . .

Indeed, Petitioners' arguments seeking to limit the right to keep and bear arms to persons who are actively serving in militias would produce absurd results irreconcilable with the purpose of the Bill of Rights and the plain language of the Second Amendment. Interpreting the Second Amendment as recognizing a right conditioned upon military service, where eligibility for military service is defined by the Government, prevents the Amendment from acting as any constraint on Government action at all. Such a result is contrary not only to the literal text of the Amendment, but to the intentions of the Framers. Further, in light of the current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, such an interpretation would completely eradicate any Second Amendment right for members of the LGBT community.

-- from the brief of Pink Pistols, an advocacy group for gay and transgendered gun owners

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The Second 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." Under longstanding linguistic principles that were well understood and recognized at the time the Second Amendment was adopted, the "well regulated Militia" clause necessarily adds meaning to the "keep and bear Arms" clause by furnishing the reason for the latter's existence. The first clause is what linguists call an "absolute construction" or "absolute clause." It functions by melding the sentence "A well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State" together with the sentence "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed" to express this thought: "Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." On its face, the language of the Amendment tells us that the reason why the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed is because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State. The purpose of the Second Amendment, therefore, is to perpetuate "a well regulated Militia."

-- from the brief for professors of linguistics and English Dennis E. Baron, Richard W. Bailey, and Jeffrey P. Kaplan

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