Supreme Court Gun Decision Undermines Rationale for District Gun Bill

Supreme Court Gun Decision Undermines Rationale for District Gun Bill

WASHINGTON, DC -- As Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) works to defeat the standalone D.C. gun bill that the National Rifle Association (NRA) seeks to impose on the District, she said, "I am relieved that today's ruling did not create new and more harmful gun law. The Supreme Court's decision does nothing to support the arguments made by the NRA and others to justify the standalone D.C. gun bill pending in the House and Senate. Instead, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that gun safety regulations are constitutional. I believe that the ruling encompasses D.C.'s revised gun laws."

In its very narrow ruling today, the Court held that the Second Amendment is an individual right applicable to the states. The case challenged effective bans on the possession of handguns in Chicago, IL and Oak Park, IL, which were similar to the ban the Supreme Court struck down in District of Columbia v. Heller (which only applied to D.C. because it is a federal district). The Court said today, "We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as ‘prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill', ‘laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms.' We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents' doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms."

The District's gun laws, which were revised after Heller, were recently upheld by a federal court. In fact, the NRA's D.C. gun bill would prohibit regulations that the Supreme Court has expressly said are constitutional. For example, although the Supreme Court has said that guns can be prohibited in schools and government buildings, the pending D.C. gun bill bars D.C. from prohibiting guns in District-owned and -controlled buildings and structures that do not have certain security measures in place, such as elementary schools and recreation centers.