Even Some Liberals Now Accept Individual Gun Rights

ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:

Some prominent former believers that only members of the "militia" have a right to be armed have altered their view. Their new position had an impact in the recent DC Appeals Court decision upholding the right of individuals to be armed.
Follow this link to the original source: "Liberal case for gun rights shifts debate"

COMMENTARY:

Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe admits that he now believes the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own a weapon. "My conclusion came as somewhat of a surprise to me," he stated. He made the switch from believing only in the collective right to an individual right as far back as 2000. But he has been joined in this revised attitude by several other law professors including Yale's Akhil Reed Amar and Texas University's Sanford Levinson.

The shifting opinion by such prominent legal scholars has paved the way for the recent 2 to 1 decision of the D.C. Appeals Court upholding private ownership of firearms. That ruling, positing that residents of the District of Columbia have a right to be armed, overturned one of the strictest gun-banning laws in the entire nation.

The Second Amendment mentions militia but ends by stating that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Constitutional scholars have never had any difficulty understanding the term "people" in the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to assemble peaceably or the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches.

If "people" can mean individual persons in some amendments, why not in all? Did the Founders intend the word to mean one thing in some amendments and something completely different in another? To suggest such a thing is to insult the very careful men who wrote the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
The reversal of these professors from previously believing that only members of a militia could be armed is most welcome. But it is difficult to understand why anyone should ever have held such a view. Even if stress is placed on the term "militia" at the beginning of the amendment, isn't it evident that those who comprise such a force spring from the people, who were expected to bring their own weapons to defend themselves and their country?

The Second Amendment begins "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state...." Some have claimed the Founders expected there might be a need for armed "people" to keep even the militia "well regulated."

In any case, it is a most welcome development that some legal scholars and a federal appeals court now understand what the term "people" means. The right of all law-abiding citizens to be armed must never be destroyed.