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The government of the District of Columbia is asking the Supreme Court to uphold a 31-year ban on handgun ownership in the district. In March a federal appeals court ruled in the case Heller v. District of Columbia, that the handgun ban was unconstitutional, as was a provision that rifles and shotguns be kept unloaded and fitted with trigger locks, or totally disassembled. However, the rifle regulations will not be under consideration before the Supreme Court at this time.

The high court's agreement to hear the case comes as no surprise, and in fact is eagerly awaited by gun rights advocates, gun control proponents, lawmakers, and students of constitutional study alike. The outcome is difficult to predict, as the court has been silent on the issue for approximately 70 years. Most recently, the court refused to hear a case in 2003 concerning the banning of assault rifles in California. Whatever the outcome, it will be the most divisive decision since Roe v. Wade, with the same kind of legal and political implications and consequences. Debate will begin in either February or March, with the ruling expected sometime in June.

The D.C. handgun ban was originally passed in 1976, and enacted by local elected officials who believed that locking up guns deterred crime. The officials were wrong, however: Washington, D.C., is still one of the most dangerous cities in which to live, being at the top of the list for violent crimes, particularly homicides.

Gun control advocates insist that the Second Amendment favors only a collective right of the people, in the militia style, to keep and bear arms, whereas gun rights proponents equally insist that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual the right to keep and bear arms. The individual right to keep and bear arms came to America with the colonists from England — it was listed in the English Bill of Rights of 1688. It was defended by the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord in 1775, and was enshrined in the Constitution adopted in 1787 and enacted in 1789. It has thus always been part of the supreme law of the land, until that title was usurped and applied to the Supreme Court in the late 20th century.

The black-robed justices need to remember that it is not their job to interpret the Constitution; it is their job to obey the Constitution, to adhere to the limitations on government in the Constitution, and to decide that many matters before them do not fall under their jurisdiction.

Thomas Jefferson didn't believe that the Constitution should be interpreted, as he indicated when he said, "On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning can be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

It doesn't get much plainer than that. Let's hope and pray the justices honor the legacy handed down to them and, like Jefferson, contemplate the "honest meaning" of the Constitution and the "plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption."

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