About 80 million Americans, representing half of U.S. homes, own more than 223 million guns. And yet, 60% of Democrats and 30% of Republicans favor stronger gun ownership laws.
Historically, states have regulated laws governing individual ownership and use of guns. State gun laws vary widely from loose regulations in many southern, western and rural states to restrictive laws in the largest cities. Under the Reagan administration in the 1980s, though, the gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, accelerated pressure on Congress to loosen gun control laws and restrictions.
Gun Rights & the Second Amendment
Gun rights are granted by the Second Amendment, which 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."
All political viewpoints agree that the econd Amendment guarantees the right of the government to maintain an armed militia to protect the nation. But disagreement exists as to whether or not it guarantees the right of all persons to own/use guns.
Collective Rights vs. Individual Rights
Until the mid-20th century, most constitutional scholars held a Collective Rights position, that the Second Amendment only protects the collective right of the states to maintain armed militias. This is regarded as the liberal stance.
Conservative scholars hold an Individual Rights position that the Second Amendment also grants an individual's right to own guns as personal, private property, and that many restrictions on buying and carrying guns unconstitutionally impede individual rights.
Gun Control & the World
The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership and of gun homicide in the developed world, per a 1999 Harvard School of Public Health study.
In 1997, Great Britain banned private ownership of almost all handguns. And in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard, a close ally of President Bush, commented after a 1996 mass killings in that country that "we took action to limit the availability of funs, and we showed a national resolved that the gun culture that is such a negative in the U.S. would never become a negative in our country."
Wrote Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne in 2007, "Our country is a laughingstock on the rest of the planet because of our devotion to unlimited gun rights."
Latest Developments
(See specific PROS and CONS at page two of this article.)Nine of the eleven U.S. districts courts have long held a strong Collective Rights view that the Second Amendment covers only one matter: empowerment of government to maintain an armed militia to defend the U.S. as a whole. These courts have contended that the Second Amendment doesn't extend to individual ownership of guns.
District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008)
All that changed with the historic Supreme Court decision on June 26, 2008.
In 2003, six Washington D.C. residents filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the constitutionality of Washington D.C.'s Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, considered among the most restrictive in the U.S.
Enacted in response to a horrifically high crime and gun violence rate, the D.C. law outlawed ownership of handguns, except for police officers and certain others. The D.C. law also specified that shotguns and rifles must be kept unloaded or dissembled, and with the trigger locked. (Read more about D.C. gun laws.)
The federal District Court dismissed the lawsuit.
The six litigants, led by Dick Heller, a Federal Judicial Center guard who wanted to keep a gun at home, appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C.
On March 9, 2007, the federal Appeals court voted 2 to 1 to strike down the dismissal of the Heller suit. Wrote the majority:
"To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms... That is not to suggest that the government is absolutely barred from regulating the use and ownership of pistols. "
The NRA called the ruling a "significant victory for individual... rights."
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence called it "judicial activism at its worst."
Supreme Court Review of District of Columbia vs. Heller
Both litigants and defendants appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed on On November 20, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear this landmark gun rights case.On March 18, 2008, the Court heard oral arguments from both sides.
On June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to overturn the restrictive gun laws of Washington D.C., as depriving individuals of their right to own a gun, as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
For a succinct discussion of this ruling, see District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberty.
Background
Political focus on U.S. gun control laws has increased since 1968 passage of the Gun Control Act, enacted after the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.Between 1985 and 1996, 28 states eased restrictions on concealed weapon carrying. As of 2000, 22 states allowed concealed guns to be carried almost anywhere, including places of worship.
The following are the federal laws enacted to control/tax guns held by individuals:
- 1934 - National Firearms Act imposed a tax on the sale of machine guns and short-barrel firearms, in reaction public rage over gangster activity.
- 1938 - Federal Firearms Act required licensing of gun dealers.
- 1968 - Gun Control Act expanded licensing and record-keeping; banned felons and the mentally ill from buying guns; banned the mail order sale of guns.
- 1972 - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was created to oversee federal regulation of guns.
- 1986 - Firearms Owners Protection Act eased some gun sale restrictions, reflecting the growing influence of the NRA under President Reagan.
- 1993 - Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act requires gun dealers to run background checks on purchasers. Establishes national database of prohibited gun owners.
- 1994 - Violent Crime Control Act banned the sale of new assault weapons for ten years. The Act was sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). the Republican-led Congress allowed the law expire in 2004.
- 2003 - Tiahrt Amendment protects gun dealers and manufacturers from certain lawsuits.
- 2007 - via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, Congress closes loopholes in the national database after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech University.
