The Supreme Court says Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first definitive pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
Answering a 127-year old constitutional question, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun, at least in one’s home. The Court, splitting 5-4, struck down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession.
Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the majority stressed that the Court was not casting doubt on long-standing bans on gun possession by felons or the mentally retarded, or laws barring guns from schools or government buildings, or laws putting conditions on gun sales.
In District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), the Court nullified two provisions of the city of Washington’s strict 1976 gun control law: a flat ban on possessing a gun in one’s home, and a requirement that any gun — except one kept at a business — must be unloaded and disassembled or have a trigger lock in place. The Court said it was not passing on a part of the law requiring that guns be licensed.
American Minute
with Bill Federer
The U.S. Constitution went into effect JUNE 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the 9th state to ratified it.
The 55 writers of the U.S. Constitution consisted of:
26 Episcopalians, 11 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 2 Quakers and 1 Deist - Dr. Franklin, who called for prayer during the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787:
"I therefore beg leave to move - that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning."
The Journal of the U.S. House of Representatives, March 27, 1854, recorded the unanimous vote of the 33rd Congress to print Congressman James Meacham's report, which stated:
"At the adoption of the Constitution, we believe every State - certainly 10 of the 13 - provided as regularly for the support of the Church as for the support of the Government...
Down to the Revolution, every colony did sustain religion in some form.
It was deemed peculiarly proper that the religion of liberty should be upheld by a free people."
Congressman Meacham concluded:
"Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle."
