Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority (Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts and Alito). The “District of Columbia prohibition on the possession of usable handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution.”
This is a victory for the United States and our constitution! And we owe President George W. Bush a big thank you on this one. This would not have happened without Justice Sam Alito, his last appointment to the court.
Like I said yesterday, elections matter and it’s important who does the appointing to the Supreme Court. We will see what Senator Obama does about this today. He shocked everyone when he agreed with the conservatives judges over the child rape law. He is one record last year saying he believed the DC gun ban was constitutional, well we see another change in position… I can only imagine.
Key quotes from Justice Scalia and the majority:
“We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.”
“the most natural reading of ‘keep Arms’ in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”
“The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.”
“Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”
“Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.”
“The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.”
“It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense.”
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”
“Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should 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 buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’”
Read the full thing or download for later here.
Read More…
Text of the Supreme Court ruling (thanks SCOTUSBLOG.com)
Washington D.C. Vs. Heller
Google Books – More Guns, Less Crime
Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick virtually won reelection last night. Even though 32,462 people voted for some else (over her 20,888 votes). Had Mary Waters or Martha Scott sat this election out, Cheeks Kilpatrick would be in the unemployment line today. 
