The Supreme Court will rule on gun rights

[Len Backus]

Former Sen. George Allen
Do we the people have the individual right to own guns?

That is question before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 18 in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. This case directly challenges the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. In 1976, D.C. officials imposed a strict gun-ban law to supposedly curb increasing gun violence. But security guard Dick Anthony Heller believes he has a right to keep a handgun in his home and filed a lawsuit against the District. U.S. courts so far have agreed with Heller and ruled that the Second Amendment “protects an individual right to keep and bear arms … for such activities as hunting and self-defense.” D.C. officials have appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

Heller is the first pure Second Amendment case the U.S. Supreme Court has heard since the landmark United States v. Miller case in 1939. In that case, the court found—perhaps because Miller himself was not represented in the court—that there was no evidence that the defendant's possession of a short-barreled shotgun was related to the purposes of the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, the Miller decision has been misinterpreted by lower courts as indicating that Second Amendment rights are not meant for individuals but for State militias such as the National Guard.

D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty believes that only more violence will ensue if the Heller ruling is upheld. However, guns do not kill or rob people; criminals do. Criminals intent on misusing firearms and committing violent crimes such as murder, rape or robbery simply ignore such “gun-free zones” and are free to assault undefended people. Violent criminals prefer their victims to be unarmed. We have seen this throughout the country; D.C. presents daily examples of this criminal behavior.

In Virginia, when we abolished the lenient, dishonest parole system, we rejected the “holy criminal” apologists’ views; we sentenced violent criminals to longer terms. A government can lock up all the guns, but if criminals are loose, we are not safe. Rather than take away the right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, their families and their property, the government has a primary responsibility to protect citizens from criminals.

The results of the two competing philosophies are clear and instructive. The District of Columbia, with its gun ban, continues to have high crime rates. Its law-abiding citizens and visitors have been prohibited from possessing firearms the past several decades and crime-ridden D.C. is surely not the model of a safe place. Across the Potomac River in Virginia, during my service as Governor, we passed a “concealed carry” law and abolished parole resulting in dramatic increases in time served for violent felons. Since 1995, the violent crime rate in Virginia has declined by nearly 23 percent. The murder rate is down by 30 percent and the forcible rape rate has dropped by more than 15 percent. This is a logical result when one realizes that most crimes were being committed by criminals, not guns.

By referring to our history and secession from the British Monarchy, we can be enlightened on one of the reasons for inclusion of “the right to bear arms” in the Bill of Rights. The British tried to disarm the colonists, forced them to pay for the established Church and quartered the King’s soldiers among the colonists. Indeed, the Bill of Rights protects the peoples’ freedom of religion, assembly, and expression; citizens have to right to petition their government, to have due process and to bear arms. The Bill of Rights also provides other individual protections against taking of property, cruel and unusual punishment, and quartering of troops. On the basis of this historical context, it is therefore logical that a government prohibition against a law-abiding citizen who owns and possesses a handgun is a preposterous, clearly unconstitutional infringement of that natural and fundamental right to self-defense.

In correspondence with John Cartwright in 1824, Thomas Jefferson noted that “power is inherent in the people” and that “it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” Second Amendment rights are inalienable and essential to personal self-defense. Let us hope that the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will read our history and properly allow our reasonable freedoms to endure.

The foundational principles of the Bill of Rights should truly continue to apply in the United States of America.

-George Allen, former Governor and Senator of Virginia, is currently the President of George Allen Strategies and serves as the Reagan Ranch Presidential Scholar. To learn more, visit GeorgeAllen.com.
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