As the reports in all three publications note, Monday's ruling extents a previous Supreme Court ruling on gun ownership laws from federal jurisdiction, such as Washington D.C., to state and local levels of US government, whose laws banning gun ownership have now been ruled unconstitutional and must therefore be changed. The specific case that the judges ruled on was that of Chicago, where the city government had tried to ban people from owning guns to control that city's high firearm murder rate. Four Chicago residents who wanted to own guns and keep them in their homes for protection took the case through the US court system, eventually ending up in the Supreme Court, where five of the nine judges have now ruled in their favour to allow them to own guns.
Although it's clear that many disagree with this decision, such as The New York Times (The Court, 2010) and C.L, writing in The Economist (2010), it's one with which I agree. The controversy, which has been of long standing in the US, is mainly over the meaning of the second amendment to the US Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights; it's very short and 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". The court had already decided, in 2008, that this meant that ordinary Americans had a legal constitutional right to own guns. The new decision has explicitly extended the earlier decision from federal law to all American law, which must now allow US citizens to own guns.
The first thing I thought worth a note is that this reminds us how important words are. This is often the case with Supreme Court decisions, which are largely interpreting the meaning of the excellent US Constitution, which has served Americans extremely well for more than 200 years without a single army coup treating it as toilet paper. As this court decision shows, words and their meanings have a very real impact on the world and our lives.
Following the above point, I was again impressed with the excellence of the US Constitution: it's very short, but managed to get things pretty much right to set the foundation for an extremely stable, successful and peaceful nation. My own country's constitution is good, but I think the US's is even better. It's short, but covers all the most important elements necessary for a healthy democracy without getting bogged down in details that governments should be free to decide and change, such as who provides education and so on.
And that brings me to the last point I wanted to make, why I think that those who oppose this decision are wrong, not just on legal grounds, but also morally. It is true that the murder rate in Chicago is high, and that it would be good to reduce that, but it does not follow that anything that reduces that murder rate is acceptable or right, just as not everything that reduced heart disease would be acceptable - should fatty pork be made illegal because it's unhealthy? Should citizens be legally forced to exercise every day? Such things would almost certainly reduce death rates and lead to a healthier, more productive society, so is that a good enough reason for a government to make them law? I think not, nor is the need to reduce murder rates a good enough reason to ban gun ownership. In fact, the United States is much less violent than many other countries, even it's murder rate is only half as high as Thailand's. I think that the Supreme Court has made another right decision, in line both with the excellent American Constitution and with justice.
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References
C.L. (2010, June 28) Guns n' Robes. The Economist. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/06/gun_control_and_supreme_court
The Court: Ignoring the Reality of Guns. (2010, June 28). The New York Times. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29tue1.html?emc=eta1
Liptak, A. (2010, June 28). Justices Extend Firearm Rights in 5-to-4 Ruling. The New York Times. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29scotus.html?emc=eta1
US Supreme Court extends gun rights. (2010, June 28). BBC News. Retrieved June 30, 2010 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10438332.stm
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