Where are the boundaries on owning guns? [View all]
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled seven years ago in District of Columbia vs. Heller that the 2nd Amendment "conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms," but it also said that right was "not unlimited." Government and courts have been wrestling ever since over just how far an individual's right goes, and a decision Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit may help draw some much-needed boundaries.
The District of Columbia has enacted stringent gun-control laws over the years, responding in large part to the city's seemingly relentless gun violence. The 2008 case centered on a requirement that gun owners make their weapons essentially inoperable if they kept them in the house. The court tossed out that law as too restrictive, and established the individual right to keep a gun in the house for self-protection. The District of Columbia has since adopted more gun laws, drawing more court challenges.
First, the good part about the D.C. Circuit's ruling, which doesn't bind courts outside the nation's capital but can influence them: It recognized that the government can require gun owners to provide a photograph and fingerprints to register a handgun because there is a legitimate public safety interest in doing so. It also said the government has the authority to require registration of long guns shotguns and rifles. Both of those can help keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill and others barred by law from having them.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-0922-guns-dc-20150923-story.html