The most important decision the Supreme Court has ever made is coming soon.
This month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide District of Columbia v. Heller, the most important Second Amendment case in the court’s history.
More than five years ago, six Washington, D.C., residents challenged the constitutionality of the city’s 32-year ban on all functional firearms in the home. If the challenge is successful, it will mean the court has revisited and perhaps reversed United States v. Miller, the second most important Second Amendment case in the court’s history. For nearly seven decades, gun controllers and gun rights advocates alike have struggled to apply the murky doctrines propounded by Justice James Clark McReynolds in his 1939 Miller opinion.
The Heller decision will be a practical choice. The “War on Drugs” is really a war on citizens – citizens who believe that they, not the state, are the ones who are in the best position to decide what should or should not pass into their own bodies. The “War on Drugs” created a new subset of Americans who are automatic criminals because they believe their bodies belong to them and not the state. If the Supreme Court decides that citizens have no individual right to bear arms, they will be creating another artificial class of criminals – people who believe that it is the individual and not the state that bears primary responsibility for his or her own security. If the Court creates an unnecessary, foolish and short-sighted “War on Guns” it will make the 40-year-old and completely unwinnable “We Own Your Body” war pale in comparison.
And Americans’ civil rights will continue to be spit on, ground into the dirt and thrown down the toilet. Let us all hope that the Court does not force my fellow gun owners and I to rise up and resist tyranny.