Second Amendment extremists will tell you that any regulation of firearms constitutes infringement. However, they fail to reference the entirety of the landmark 2007 SCOTUS Second Amendment ruling, in DC v. Heller, which affirms the individual right to bear arms.
In his majority opinion, arch-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia clearly states that “like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Scalia asserts that states are “free to restrict or protect the right”— including prohibitions on possession by felons or the mentally unstable, certain weapons types, carrying firearms in “sensitive places,” and conditions on commercial sales. “Nor, correspondingly, does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents,” he wrote.
The suggestion that any attempt at state gun-control legislation is unconstitutional is unsupported anywhere in any high court ruling in American history. And the related implication that the provisions of I-1639 are in clear violation of the Constitution is nonsense.
Thanks to all of our city and state law enforcement officials who have pledged to uphold our state and federal constitutions, and enforce state law — which reflects the will of the people of Washington, as best as the democratic process is able.
