Much of the discussion about Heller is politicized (both pro and anti-gun), which doesn’t advance the average shooter’s understanding of what is likely to happen as the Supreme Court decision matures.
One of the best breakdowns Gun Reports has seen of what Heller means occurred in a recent interview on NationalJournal.com.
Mary Gilbert interviewed, Adam Winkler, professor of law at University of California, Los Angeles, discussing the historical context and the practical and political implications of the Heller decision.
Here’s an excerpt:
Q: The New York Times wrote that with this decision the court “began writing a new chapter of constitutional law.” Do you agree?
Winkler: I do, but I don’t…. The idea that the right to bear arms is somehow some new right seems to me totally far-fetched. The New York Times is right, there is a new chapter of constitutional law being written — a Second Amendment chapter. But, that said, the “right to bear arms” chapter has been written over the last 200 years. Almost every state in the union recognizes an individual right to bear arms for private purposes under their state constitutions….
Many states put these provisions in their original founding constitutions; other states have more recently added them. But it’s a very well established constitutional right that individuals have under American constitutional law, broadly defined to include the American constitutional tradition at the state level.
There have been hundreds of cases challenging gun control laws at the state level, and it’s always been true, despite what all of the extremists say in the gun debate, that we’ve had an individual right to bear arms and we’ve had reasonable gun control regulations. And they’ve coexisted peacefully with occasional controversies over particular kinds of bans. But the truth is that courts are not going to allow guys with bazookas to wander down Pennsylvania Avenue, and they’re also not going to allow government to completely disarm the people. Because that right to bear arms is part of the American tradition.
So is it a new chapter? Yeah, there’s going to be a lot more cases. There’s a Second Amendment chapter. But… you might think of this as just one more story in a larger chapter about the right to bear arms in American constitutional law.
Click here to read the full Q&A:
