| There was a fair amount of
attention drawn to the announcement that the Supreme Court would hear a
case involving the gun control laws in Washington, DC. It was hailed
as significant because it will be the first Supreme Court decision in many
years on the 2nd Amendment.
While it's true that any court ruling on
the Bill of Rights, especially regarding an issue as contentious as gun
control, is significant, there's an even more important principle in play
here that few, if any, people are talking about.
At the heart of this case is a DC ordinance
that bans the ownership of most handguns. The stories I read when
the Court made its announcement indicated that the two sides' arguments
could be boiled down to gun rights versus public safety. People opposed
to the ordinance said that it violated the 2nd Amendment's guarantee of
the right to bear arms. Proponents said that, because of handgun
violence, the ordinance was necessary in order to protect people.
The problem with that latter argument,
though, goes well beyond the issue of gun control, and it strikes at the
very heart of what it means to have constitutional protections of ANY right.
When our rights are governed not by what the law says but by an argument
about what we need, then those rights cease to be guaranteed.
We already say that type of argument put
forward by supporters of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.
Nobody said they were opposed to the freedom of speech. They simply
said that this measure was important and necessary. The "need" for
this legislation trumped the fact that it was controlling the rights of
citizens to engage in political speech, which is supposed to be the MOST
precious and protected speech there is. The message: the First Amendment
is nice but the "necessary" regulation of campaign finance took precedence.
The standard was set that you can do an end run around Constitutional protections
if the issue at hand is important enough.
The Washington DC handgun ban is a chance
to either reinforce the idea that constitutional guarantees actually have
force or affirm that "importance" and "necessity" take precedence over
constitutionality.
That is ultimately the debate that needs
to happen in the Supreme Court. It is the debate that should be the
focus in news analysis and commentary. And it is this debate, much
more than gun control, abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, or any
other topic, that should be a focus of the campaign to elect the person
who will name the next crop of federal judges.
We should ask the candidates when constitutional
guarantees matter and when they are trumped by an argument of "necessity".
And if their answers aren't satisfactory, we should ask ourselves whether
we should entrust them with those guarantees by giving them our vote. |
