An individual right: Second Amendment is for the people

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a welcome ruling Thursday about Americans' right to own guns. By a closer margin than you'd like  - but one that stands nonetheless - the justices determined Americans do have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution since its ratification in 1791, The Associated Press reported. But no interpretation should be needed for the plain English in which the second of the 10 guarantees of freedom the Bill of Rights is written: "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."

It's maddening - but less so today - to hear those who would place restrictions on gun ownership say "the people" somehow means state militias when the rest of the Bill of Rights deals with individual freedoms. This was the first time the court addressed the issue of guns being a "state's right" or the people's right. The court came down on the side of individual liberty.

"The Second Amendment protects an individual right to protect a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful proposes, such as self-defense within the home," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority.

Thursday's 5-4 ruling strikes down Washington, D.C.'s 1976 antigun law that bans private ownership of any handgun and allows shotguns and rifles to be owned only if they are unloaded, disassembled or hampered by trigger lock. The D.C. Circuit Court found the city's law unconstitutional, and the D.C. government appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case - District of Columbia v. Heller - is named in part after Dick Heller, 66, a one-time security officer who was one of six plaintiffs recruited to challenge the law, and the only one whom lower court judges deemed to have the legal standing necessary to proceed, AP reported. Thursday's ruling was the last to be announced for the 2007-2008 term, and it's a fitting reminder of the freedoms we'll celebrate on Independence Day.

Scalia did note that some gun restrictions will remain. "Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited," he wrote. "It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." So criminals and mentally ill people still won't be legally permitted to carry guns, just as firearms will continue to be banned in schools.

The National Rifle Association planned to file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several of its suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome. The logic the majority applied to residents in Washington, D.C., deserves to apply to law-abiding people living anywhere in this nation.