Just Politics

[blackhawks]

Even Scalia Would Allow Today’s Gun-Control Proposals

Republicans should stop using the Constitution as cover. All gun control measures being debated today would be perfectly legal under the Supreme Court’s last major gun decision.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-would-allow-todays-gun-control-proposals-after-el-paso-and-dayton

Crucially, however, like all constitutional rights, the right to gun ownership is not unlimited. Just as you can’t shout fire in the proverbial crowded theater, so too, you can’t stockpile weapons free of any regulation. In Justice Scalia’s words, it is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

In particular, Justice Scalia strongly suggested that his reading of the Second Amendment would still allow laws prohibiting felons from owning guns, prohibiting the carrying of firearms near schools and government buildings, and “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Even more importantly, Justice Scalia limited the Second Amendment right to the kinds of weapons “in common use at the time” of the amendment’s passage. Total bans on assault-style weapons are completely constitutional (though the law expired in 2004).

The fact is, there’s no legal basis for claiming that the Constitution bans gun control. It’s just convenient for Senate Republicans to say so.