DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER
DISPOSITION: Rejected (in favor of Heller).
JUDGES: Authored by Kayla Cooper and
Melissa C. Navarro.
Chief Justice Jim Hanson dissents.
COUNSEL:
For Appellant(s): John-Henry Heckendorn, Walla Walla, WA.
For Respondent: Harry Hixon, Walla Walla, WA.
I.
FACTS OF THE CASE
The Firearms Control
Regulations Act of 1976 (referred to as the handgun ban) essentially bars those
dwelling in the District of Columbia from registering and consequently legally
possessing a gun designed to be shot with one-hand. The constitutionality of
the ban was challenged in 2003 when district citizens including Heller sued the
district. Citing lack of membership in an organized militia, the District Court
dismissed the claim. Heller and others appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals, which ruled that the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment is
extended to the individual. The Supreme Court affirmed. The District of
Columbia and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty appealed to the Hanson Court of the United
States on the grounds that Second Amendment rights were not violated and that
the provisions did not fall under the purview of constitutional consideration. We uphold the Supreme Court’s decision.
I.
INTRODUCTION
In Emerson v. United States, 270
F.3d 203 (5th Cir. 2001), the Court
supported individual rights in the Second Amendment. In that case, one man’s
inability to possess a weapon while under a restraining order raised
controversy over his individual rights as a citizen. The respondent argued that
Mr. Emerson lacked an individual right to bear arms, as it was considered a
state militia right. Mr. Emerson argued to have the indictment against him
lifted since he was not considered a criminal under the law for bearing arms.
The term “people” in the Second amendment has the same meaning throughout the
Constitution. While collective rights advocates would argue that “people” means
“states” in the Second Amendment, it is not a strong enough interpretation to
isolate the Amendment as strictly a right for the states’ militias. The
individual rights of Americans are present throughout the Constitution and
should still be respected as a matter of law.
II. THE
INEFFECTIVENESS OF THE FIREARMS CONTROL REGULATIONS ACT OF 1975
In response to the wave of gun
crime that emerged in the 1970s the District of Columbia City Council
established the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, which prohibited the personal
possession of a handgun in an individual’s home. As the most restrictive gun
act in the nation, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold D.C. v. Heller 554 U.S. ___ (2008)
was based on the majority opinion that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s
right to own a handgun for self-defense, especially in a city where the crime
level is among the highest in the country.[i]
Under the Firearms Control Regulations Act
of 1975, certain law enforcement officials were exempt from this law’s restrictive
provisions. While it is the duty of some of these officials to act as a
militia, (under the definition of “militia” in the Second Amendment), all
Americans are at liberty to take power back from officials or individuals who
obstruct their rights.
In this case, the prevalence of gun
violence in Washington, D.C. is not a justifiable factor for bans to be put in
place since we have seen that such bans do not reduce violence. Instead, such
bans inherently infringe upon individual rights that are granted through the
Second Amendment.
The grave reality of D.C.’s gun violence cannot be ignored and the current
statistics today show that rigid gun control over individuals is ineffective.
While it is clear that the availability of many forms of firearms can contribute
to such instances of violence, the rise in gun violence cannot be directly
linked to a lack of arms control. According to a Cato Institute report released
by Robert Levy, the District of Columbia experienced a 97 percent increase in
violent crime from 1976 to 1993 after the Act was put into place. Additionally, the murder rate as of 2005 is “32 percent
about the 1976 level.”[ii] These statistics imply that the rigid arms control put into
place in 1976, for the purpose of public safety, has proven to be ineffective.
The founding principle that our country still stands on includes the right of
the people to use force against an abusive government. The Declaration of
Independence states:
“Governments are instituted among
Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
There is no compelling reason to legislate this important power of the people
away.” [iii]
The
dissenting opinion of this court argues that the individual right is not as
clearly stated in the Second Amendment. However, the Second Amendment does not
“legislate this important power of the people away” in order for citizens to
reach their “Safety and Happiness,” something that every individual is entitled
to and not necessarily as a collective body [iv]
III. THE IMPORTANCE OF
LAWS RECOGNIZING THE RIGHT OF PROTECTING ONE’S OWN HOME
The Second Amendment’s recognition of individual rights has
not been disproved in past cases involving individual gun rights. The case of United States v. Miller,
307 U. S. 174, does not restrict the right to bear arms for a specific
purpose of militia. Instead, it limits the kind of weaponry that distinguishes
use for militia and use for the individual. When it was written, the Second
Amendment did not take into account the types of weaponry and advanced
technology that can be armed today, thus the limitations on the Second
Amendment (if any) are of the weapons themselves. Individual rights were
respected in this case.
In an instance in which legally armed law enforcement officials are unable to
respond to a hostile situation involving an unarmed victim, weapons should be
used for self-defense. There are standards and qualifications varying
state-by-state that restrict permits based on background checks. One might
argue that a person’s illegal actions in the past should not result in denying
access to their Second Amendment rights, however, such restrictions have proved
to be a working compromise between the state and the individual. In the case of
Burton v. Sills, 53 N.J. 86 (1968),
this Court ruled that although the appellant felt the New Jersey gun control
laws restricted his Second Amendment rights to protect himself, the
installation of permit requirements allowed him to apply for ownership without
having his rights obstructed.
IV. HANDGUNS DO NOT NEED
TO BE PROHIBITED IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY
As previously stated by Justice Navarro, the Supreme Court
upheld D.C. v Heller 554 U.S. with
the majority opinion in agreement that the Second Amendment, even in a city
with high crime, guarantees an individual’s right to own a handgun. An
individual does in fact have a right to bear arms. The Constitution did not
restrict people’s rights due to future speculations about what types of
weaponry might develop. Chief Justice Hanson has argued that even if the Second
Amendment does apply to individuals, it does not warrant a “blanket right.”
Safety is an important component of any situation, and measures should be taken
to ensure it is not unnecessarily jeopardized. In the majority opinion
upholding D.C. v. Heller 554 U.S.
(2008), Scalia says:
“The Court’s opinion should not be taken to
cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons
and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive
places such as schools and government building, or laws imposing conditions and
qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those ‘in
common use at the time’ finds support in the historical tradition of
prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons”.
However, restricting legal hand gun possession is not an
effective avenue to address the plaintiffs concern about violence in the
District. By this standard, one could just as easily infer that one can not own
“arms” of any kind, especially given modern technology. The preamble to the
Second Amendment does indicate that the Framers intended firearms to be used
for militia use. A critical reading of the roots of the words and history of
their use makes this clear. Yet even after the extensive and thoughtful
analysis of the wording of the Amendment in his dissenting opinion, Justice
Stevens fails to show how, in the interest of being able to raise a militia,
Heller is not warranted to possess a handgun that he intends to keep in his
home. Militias are still prevalent in the country. In the 1990s, militias
became active in response to outrage about gun control legislation.[v]
The
Supreme Court’s ruling in United States
v. Miller, 307 U.S.174 (1939) that there is little if any relationship to a
shotgun being less than eighteen inches long to the efficiency of a militia is
not relevant in today’s society. The plaintiff frequently referred to United States v. Miller, 307 U.S.174
(1939), particularly “[in] the absence of any evidence tending to show that
possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in
length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or
efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment
guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Miller, 307 U.S., at 178. There are two key components to this that
the plaintiff failed to adequately address. The wording “at this time” is
indicative that similar rulings can and should be dealt with on an individual
basis, allowing for change and differing circumstances to be taken into
consideration. It may have been difficult in 1939 to attribute a gun less than
eighteen inches in length to the “efficiency of a well regulated militia.”
However, with changed and improved weapon technology, many handguns today are
easier to use, allowing for quick, effective action if needed. Police officers carry
handguns because of their feasibility and thus efficiency, and increasingly
firearms of handgun size are being created for military personnel.
Since
militias are typically composed of ordinary citizens, many of whom have not had
experience in combat, it is important that they be able to legally obtain a
weapon that is simple to operate. The ability to organize an effective militia
today would likely be aided by the increased operational ease and accuracy of
handguns. Handguns are one of many avenues which facilitate and are used to
carry out harmful acts and situations. Yet preventing law-abiding citizens from
protecting themselves and raising a militia is unconstitutional.
V.
THE LEGISLATURE’S REGULATORY POWER OF THE DISTRICT CAN NOT RESULT IN UNDERMINING
CITIZENS RIGHTS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION
Congress
does have unique abilities to regulate the District of Columbia. The Home Rule Act of 1973, D.C. Code § 1-203.02, does in fact give
Congress the ability to regulate the district in ways separate from the states
(we concur with the appellant that the district is not a state). However, it is
important to note that this regulation is still subject to constitutional
restraints. Just because the district can be distinctly regulated does not mean
that citizens within the district are therefore subject to having their
Constitutional rights stripped. The Second Amendment is still relevant even if
the District is unable to raise a regulated militia. While the issues
pertaining to the interpretation of the importance of a militia were previously
addressed by Justice Navarro, it is important to stress that the district’s
inability to raise a regulated militia does not mean that it is not subject to
constitutional restraints (and, thus, that the citizens within the district are
not granted protection under the Constitution with regards to both the Second
and Fourteenth Amendment). Yet Heller and others need to be able to protect
themselves from the government if needed.
Furthermore,
we concur that the Constitution does address “the right to regulate activities
related to gun use in the District of Columbia.” Yet this does not mean that
D.C. residents’ constitutional rights may be dismissed. On the contrary, it
highlights the need for a more concrete evaluation and understanding of the
extent and limitations of the District in relation to the Constitution, and
particularly the Second Amendment. In any matter where it is possible for
constitutional rights to be diminished and or adversely affected, it is
critical to ensure that such rights are not lost. Although the district is
well-intended in its effort to curb the crime level, relying on its distinction
from the states in order to deem the Second Amendment inapplicable to the
United States citizens within the district is a misunderstanding of the scope
of the law. The possibility of curbing violence and handgun related crime does
not justify eroding Constitutional rights.
The
plaintiff failed to show how the District’s law (which is distinct from the
states) concerning handgun possession is Constitutional. Justice Breyer
emphasized that violence in the District is a reasonable basis to restrict
handgun possession but fails to show that restricting legal ownership of
handguns will be an effective means of reducing handgun related violence.
Justice Breyer cites the council committee that “the easy availability of
firearms in the United States has been a major factor contributing to the
drastic increase in gun-related violence and crime over the past 40 years.”
Hearing and Disposition before the House Committee on the District of Columbia,
94th Cong., 2d Sess., on H. Con. Res. 694 Ser. No. 94-24, at 24, 25
(1976). However, past efforts to curb the level of violence have not proven to
be successful. In 1995, D.C. implemented Operation Ceasefire and harsh
crackdowns in the interest of curbing the violence. However, even after 282
guns had been confiscated, the homicide rate in the District rose significantly
the next year.[vi]
Restricting handguns is not the answer to the problem of violence in D.C.
VI.
CONCLUSION
The
District’s laws are not consistent with their expressed interest in reducing
gun violence. Restricting the right to bear a firearm does not tackle the real
issues underlying and fueling the problem; guns, including handguns, do not
simply fire themselves. Ruling that the Second Amendment is not a “blanket
right” allowing anyone to bear arms of any caliber and lethal potential is
correct. But simply because a certain weapon is more commonly abused than
others does not mean that it is legal to erode people’s ability to defend
themselves. The importance of upholding the constitutional rights of all United
States citizens, regardless of whether their place of residence is subject to
different legislative regulation than others, is crucial to the vitality of the
founding principles of the country.
__________________________________________
Chief Justice Jim Hanson, dissenting.
I dissent.
Initially, there is absolutely
no textual, historical, or other justification for the assertion that the
Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own arms for any reason
other than the militia. This “right” is made up. Justice Stevens does an excellent
job of pointing this out. See http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=07-290#dissent1
Appellant brief does an
excellent job of pointing out the multiple ways the Second Amendment should be
read and none justify an individual right to own a handgun. Still, Scalia
provides an exhaustive analysis of the Second Amendment showing that possibly
(certainly not definitively) that the Second Amendment might have also applied
to other areas beyond the militia.
But U.S. v Miller in 1939 already made it
very clear that the Second Amendment applied exclusively to the militia. In
that decision, the Court noted:
In the
absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun
having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some
reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated
militia, we cannot say that the Second
Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly
it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary
military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
Aymette v. State of Tennessee, 2 Humph., Tenn., 154, 158.
The majority’s as well as
Scalia’s attempt to rewrite Miller as being about the kinds of weapons not permitted under the Second Amendment is not
persuasive. It is patently and obviously false. The Miller Court dismissed the
claim that a shortened shotgun is not protected because it has no reasonable
connection to a militia. The same can, obviously, be said about handguns. Their
relationship to a militia is highly suspect, particularly when Heller and
others similarly situated are making it clear they are not part of a militia.
Still, the majority in this case attempts to argue that
the handguns could be used as part of a militia and implies that individuals
need weapons to be able to fight. They note “Militias are still prevalent in
the country. In the 1990s, militias became active in response to outrage about
gun control legislation.” (op cite) I would remind the Court that these same
militias were involved in the bombing of Oklahoma City federal building as well
as the Waco massacre. Is the Court saying that such individuals should start
with handguns and then assumably more weapons in order to form their own
militias against the federal government? This is nothing short of anarchy and I
hope the Court meant this idea only in the most general sense of protecting
liberty.
But if the point is that individuals should just have
handguns, not major weaponry, then what real chance does the majority believe
individuals have against the FBI let alone the military that has far superior
weaponry? Surely, such a militia made up of individuals with handguns would end
up dead, with no change to show for their efforts.
And,
such efforts are exactly what this Court has rejected time and again. The 1939
Miller decision was not an isolated decision. The Miller Court’s view was
indeed affirmed in 1980 in Lewis v United
States when the Court noted:
These
legislative restrictions on the use of firearms are neither based upon
constitutionally suspect criteria, nor do they trench upon any constitutionally
protected liberties. See United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 178 (1939) (the Second Amendment guarantees no right to
keep and bear a firearm that does not have "some reasonable relationship
to [445 U.S. 55, 66] the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated
militia") . . .
I don’t know how much clearer
the Court could be.
Instead,
here it is 2009 and we are overturning clear precedent based on a litany of
rationalizations that boil down to this: Since the Second Amendment did not
explicitly exclude the right to arms for self-protection, then the right may be
inferred. And from there, those on the Court favoring gun rights insert their
preference over that of the legislature which has made it clear that it wishes
to ban such weapons.
And to the degree that the Court wishes to invent new
rights, which these decisions clearly do, why this right? When this Court has
established a right beyond the explicit text of the Constitution, it has been
about personhood, privacy, parenting, birth, etc. In this case, the Court is
saying individuals have a right to a gun, an object someone can possess. Such a
grant of implied right is unprecedented. Particularly, when it is a right to
something that is dangerous and can kill (and does kill).
As
such, the Court’s claim involves engaging in a difference of opinion with the
legislature, not a right. The majority supports their claim for a right to own
a handgun because handgun bans failed; violent crime rose. This is not a rationale for a right and this is
no more proof that it failed than saying an extra bedroom in a home has failed
to reduce the number of children in each bedroom because there are now 4 more
children. You don’t say the handgun ban failed because the larger problems of
crime grew beyond that ban. The fact is, violent crime grew everywhere and much
of the problem was the ease of access to guns. And the growing violent crime is
exactly why the District of Columbia acted. As the appellant brief notes:
In
addition, consideration of the logic behind the handgun ban underlines its
reasonability. This Court has consistently evaluated the predicative judgments
of state and district legislatures. In fact, the Court has ruled that the sole obligation of the legislature is to
assure that “in formulating its judgments, [the legislature] has drawn
reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence.” (Turner, 512 U.S. at
666). The handgun ban does not restrict access to all arms. Rather it
acknowledges that handguns have particularly detrimental societal costs. For
example, handguns are most easily stolen and thereby most frequently contribute
to crime. Handguns are especially linked to homicides among women. In the
District of Columbia seventy-two percent of women killed in firearm homicides
were killed by handguns prior to the handgun ban. Finally, handguns are easily
accessible to children, and therefore most likely to be brought into a school
environment. The District Council predicated its handgun ban on the careful
analysis of specific harms of handguns. Clearly,
the District Council instituted the handgun ban with total adherence to the
method by which the Supreme Court restricts the rights of citizens.
(from
John Henry’s brief.)
And, the District’s efforts
were not without merit:
Homicides
in the district did ebb over the next few years, largely following a national
trend. In 1977, the U.S. Conference of
Mayors reported robberies, assaults and homicides using handguns had fallen
sharply in D.C. and concluded the ban was working. However, the results were
challenged even by the city's police department, which said police tactics had
contributed to the drop.
In the
late 1980s and early 1990s, murders spiked as Washington, like many other
cities, was hit by the crack epidemic. By 1991, the number of homicides reached
479, or 81 deaths per 100,000 people, earning the city status as the nation's
murder capital.
Yet
that year, a study released by
University of Maryland criminologists in the New England Journal of Medicine
suggested the gun ban had saved lives in the decade before. They argued the
ban had prevented 47 deaths per year in D.C., both suicides and murders.
Surrounding areas in Maryland and Virginia had not seen a corresponding drop in
gun crime.
The
study analyzed data only through 1987, and did not incorporate the higher
murder rate during the crack surge, an epidemic critics said revealed the law's
weakness. Other criminologists said the study should have compared the district
to Baltimore, a city with similar crime problems where violence also declined
during the same period. The authors went
back and compared the district to other cities, including Baltimore, saying
their conclusions still held up.
In the late 1990s, the annual homicide
numbers began to fall as the crack scourge ebbed. In the past decade, many of
the city's neighborhoods also have undergone a revitalization, attracting more
affluent residents. Last year, there were 181 murders.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/14/supremecourt/main3941010.shtml
Now, certainly, one can debate
these numbers and the effectiveness of the ban on handguns and that is exactly
what legislatures are for.
But what is it about guns that a select group of people
have such affinity? The allure escapes me but to the degree it is there, it is
not a legal right, it is not part of the Second Amendment other than as part of
the militia, and it is not like any other implied right that this Court has
granted before.
And even if ownership of handguns is a “right,” it is
clearly proscribable. The majority concedes this when they acknowledge
regulations on gun ownership are permitted. Justice Breyer’s opinion rightly
notes that a regulation banning just handguns in the case of the District of
Columbia is just such a reasonable regulation of arms.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=07-290#dissent2
The handgun ordinance is a
legitimate balance. Some arms are permitted, those close in character to the
muskets common at the time of the Second Amendment’s creation and there is a
self-defense exception. Handguns, in general however, are not permitted, and
the District of Columbia has ample reason to restrict such weapons. Breyer
noted:
Handguns also appear to be a very popular weapon among criminals. In a
1997 survey of inmates who were armed during the crime for which they were
incarcerated, 83.2% of state inmates and 86.7% of federal inmates said that
they were armed with a handgun. See Dept. of Justice, Bureau
of Justice Statistics, C. Harlow, Firearm Use by Offenders, p. 3 (Nov. 2001),
online at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fuo.pdf; see also Weapon Use and
Violent Crime 2 (Table 2) (statistics indicating that handguns were used in
over 84% of nonlethal violent crimes involving firearms from 1993 to 2001). And handguns are not only popular tools for
crime, but popular objects of it as well: the FBI received on average over
274,000 reports of stolen guns for each year between 1985 and 1994, and almost
60% of stolen guns are handguns. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, M. Zawitz, Guns Used in Crime, p. 3 (July 1995), online at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/guic.pdf. Department of Justice studies
have concluded that stolen handguns in particular are an important source of
weapons for both adult and juvenile offenders. Ibid.
But this is not a matter of the
reasonableness of the ban on handguns. This is a matter of a right that the
majority creates out of nowhere. As noted, previous “implicit” rights have
been, on their face, achievable such as privacy or parental rights. This is not
the case with gun regulation; it depends on arguments conjecturing about the
safety and deterrence of such weaponry. Legislatures, not courts, are best
suited to determine how to balance these issues rather than have this Court
dictate that everyone has a right to own a handgun. As Breyer notes:
There is no cause here to depart from the
standard set forth in Turner, for the
District's decision represents the kind of empirically based judgment that
legislatures, not courts, are best suited to make. See Nixon, 528 U. S., at
402 (Breyer, J., concurring). In fact,
deference to legislative judgment seems particularly appropriate here, where
the judgment has been made by a local legislature, with particular knowledge of
local problems and insight into appropriate local solutions. See Los Angeles
v. Alameda Books, Inc., 535 U. S. 425, 440 (2002) (plurality opinion)
("[W]e must acknowledge that the Los Angeles City Council is in a better
position than the Judiciary to gather an evaluate data on local
problems"); cf. DC Rep., at 67 (statement of Rep. Gude) (describing
District's law as "a decision made on the local level after extensive
debate and deliberations"). Different localities may seek to solve similar
problems in different ways, and a "city must be allowed a reasonable opportunity
to experiment with solutions to admittedly serious problems." Renton v.
Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, 52 (1986) (internal quotation marks
omitted). "The Framers recognized
that the most effective democracy occurs at local levels of government, where
people with firsthand knowledge of local problems have more ready access to
public officials responsible for dealing with them." Garcia v. San
Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528, 575, n. 18 (1985)
(Powell, J., dissenting) (citing The Federalist No. 17, p. 107 (J. Cooke ed.
1961) (A. Hamilton)). We owe that
democratic process some substantial weight in the constitutional calculus.
And furthering the deference we
should show the legislature, the Constitution explicitly provides more
governmental control over weaponry in the District of Columbia. As appellant
brief shows:
In
fact, out of all the states and territories within the United States, the
Second Amendment least affects the District of Columbia. Specific legislation
exists within the Constitution that provides Congress with unique abilities to
restrict the district. First, the District of Columbia has no ability to raise
a militia, already rendering it exempt from the purview of the Second Amendment
(D.C. Code § 1-203.02). Moreover, following
riots in the provisional Pennsylvania capital, Congress ensured the ability to
protect itself when creating the new capital. Specifically Congress retained
“plenary power over the jurisdiction,” allowing for the specific implementation
of martial defenses as needed (U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl.17). As with the
handgun ban, this clause expressly targets the local populace. Accordingly,
consideration of other pertinent sections within the constitution supports our
Second Amendment interpretation. If anything, legislation regarding the
District of Columbia allows for more stringent regulation there than anywhere
else in the country. At a minimum, the use of an anti-federalist amendment to
restrict the very states and districts that the amendment originally proposed
to protect is entirely without merit.
The majority concedes this but
claims that this does not give the District the right to override the rights of
citizens. True enough but these aren’t rights and to the degree they are, the
District’s special characteristics explicitly provide greater deference to the
decision to implement something like the handgun ban (making it a reasonable
regulation in this situation even by the majority’s own admission that Second
Amendment rights may be limited).
Sadly,
today, the District of Columbia which passed this ordinance on a 12-1 vote and
with the support of 75% of its citizens, has had its efforts to reduce violence
thrown out in the interest of Heller and others who really want a handgun.
As such, I respectfully
dissent.
[i] D.C.
v. Heller 554 U.S. ___ (2008). "Crime Gun
Trace Analysis Reports: The Illegal Youth Firearms Markets in 17 Communities
(Executive Summary)." <http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/ycgii97/summary.pdf>.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
1997.
[ii] Levy, Robert. The D.C. Gun Ban: Supreme Court
Preview. The Cato Institute: September 24, 2007.
[iii] The Declaration of Independence, ¶. 2 (U.S. 1776)
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Beaumont, Roger.
"American as Cherry Pie? Unofficial Militias in American History".
Journal of Conflict Studies Vol. XIX No. 2, Fall 1999: University of New
Brunswick.
[vi] Lewis,
Nancy. "Officials Say D.C. Anti-Gun Program Seems to Be Working."
(1995-10-26). The Washington Post,
1995, 10-26)