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Scope of right to bear arms questioned
Attorneys argue 2nd Amendment applies only to militias, not individuals

In a case that could shape firearms laws nationwide, attorneys for the District of Columbia argued Thursday that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals.

The city defended as constitutional its long-standing ban on handguns, a law that some gun opponents have advocated elsewhere. Civil liberties groups and pro-gun organizations say the ban in unconstitutional.

At issue in the case before a federal appeals court is whether the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms" applies to all people or only to "a well regulated militia." The Bush administration has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights but the Supreme Court has never settled the issue.

If the dispute makes it to the high court, it would be the first case in nearly 70 years to address the amendment's scope. The court disappointed gun owner groups in 2003 when it refused to take up a challenge to California's ban on assault weapons.

In the Washington, D.C., case, a lower-court judge told six city residents in 2004 that they did not have a constitutional right to own handguns. The plaintiffs include residents of high-crime neighborhoods who want guns for protection.

Courts have upheld bans on automatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns but this case is unusual because it involves a prohibition on all pistols. Voters passed a similar ban in San Francisco last year but a judge ruled it violated state law. The Washington case is not clouded by state law and hinges directly on the Constitution.

"We interpret the Second Amendment in military terms," said Todd Kim, the District's solicitor general, who told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the city would also have had the authority to ban all weapons.

"Show me anybody in the 19th century who interprets the Second Amendment the way you do," Judge Laurence Silberman said. "It doesn't appear until much later, the middle of the 20th century."

Of the three judges, Silberman was the most critical of Kim's argument and noted that, despite the law, handguns were common in the District.

Silberman and Judge Thomas B. Griffith seemed to wrestle, however, with the meaning of the amendment's language about militias. If a well-regulated militia is no longer needed, they asked, is the right to bear arms still necessary?

"That's quite a task for any court to decide that a right is no longer necessary," Alan Gura, an attorney for the plaintiffs, replied. "If we decide that it's no longer necessary, can we erase any part of the Constitution?"

Here is a big hurdle for the slippery slope to this countries end. 

Let me state this clearly that one of the biggest reasons for this countries soil having never been trod upon by enemy nations in recent history is because invasion of this country would be a fight from the first moment to the last.  The vast number of the populus that has guns makes an invasion of this country a nightmare in guerilla warfare.  It may not be a huge organized operation but the vast number of pockets of people with guns and using them would be very costly to anyone invading in matters of the body count.

This is something I believe to be true.  And that when our government begins to come in and tell us that we can no longer carry/use a firearm then the government is taking away the one thing we as the people have that can also keep the government in check.  Our own Delcaration of Independence states it best
"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"

But when our own government becomes destructive to the point that it has taken away our firearms and our ability to abolish it, then how can we say we are the governed and not the enslaved.  Many people will have discussions over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but there is other rights that our founders had and they can be found in their own declaration of freedom from tyranny. 

I own one shotgun.  It was my fathers.  And that may be the only firearm in our household for as long as I live.  But I feel strongly that our government should NEVER tell us that we cannot own firearms.  I am all for gun control and there is not one person in this country as a civilian that needs an assault rifle, or a fully automatic weapon.  But to say that we cannot have something like a pistol, shotgun, rifle, etc is taking away the one thing that does help keep this country safe as well as our one weapon against complete control by the government. 

wew...sorry bout the rant.

A rant that I agree with completely. I currently have no guns. I live in government housing where it is forbidden to have any guns, swords or large knives. I even had to give up having a Navy CPO sword as it was deemed a dangerous weapon. I would hate to see this happen to those that have their own property. It is heading that way though and if some poloticians get there way there will not be any private property either.