A right to reasonable self-defense with an appropriate weapon

Some time before the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to declare that Americans have an individual right to own guns. When the story comes out, the thing to look for is how strongly the court says it.

Oral arguments on the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, were heard March 18. The tone of questioning indicated that the court is leaning toward protecting the gun owner. It's the first real gun-rights case since 1939, when a suspected moonshiner challenged the federal law against sawed-off shotguns.

The moonshiner had argued that he was protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says: "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."

In 1939, the court said the moonshiner wasn't protected because his sawed-off shotgun wasn't a militia weapon. It was a dumb answer that has been the last word in American jurisprudence for 69 years — dumb because if militia (National Guard) weapons are protected, then Americans are free to own machine guns.

Some of the anti-gun people would say Americans don't have a right to any private weapons. There are places in the world with that policy, and some that have far less gun violence than the United States.

But that isn't the issue here. We have the Second Amendment; it is part of our Constitution and is not about to be repealed. The issue is: What does it mean?

And it won't do to argue that it is only about serving in the militia. That is what the District of Columbia argued in defense of its ban on handguns, and the court wasn't buying it. It's an argument that does violence to the plain meaning of words and erases an entire amendment to the Constitution.

The right to keep and bear arms has to mean something. But which arms? Machine guns? No, said the gun-owner's attorney, Alan Gura.

On March 18, Gura had argued at the Supreme Court for a right to have "arms that are appropriate for civilian use." Speaking in Seattle last week at a meeting of the Federalist Society, Gura drew the line between semiautomatic and automatic weapons — that is, guns that shoot one round per trigger squeeze and those that spray bullets. Shooting one round at a time, you can decide whom you're shooting at, one person at a time. You can make a moral judgment. A machine gun, he said, is an "area weapon."

Our state law bans machine guns. The question then arises: If the Supreme Court breathes life into the Second Amendment, will these and other such restrictions (no plastic guns, etc.) stand?

An individual right to keep and bear arms cannot cover everything from pocket knives to H-bombs. Practically and politically it cannot. There have to be limits — but also there have to be limits on the limits, or else it is no right at all.

Perhaps it could be what Jonathan Rauch suggested in the National Journal: a right to "reasonable self-defense by competent, law-abiding adults."

State laws also recognize gun rights. The state of Washington is one of more than 40 states with a gun guarantee in its constitution. Here is ours, written in 1889:

"The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men."

That is stronger than the Second Amendment, but still subject to limits. No private armies. Defensive use only. Some weapons are presumptively defensive and some not.

Guns are not like speech, in which one can declare that the more speech the better, because "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

That is not always true of words, and is more often untrue of personal artillery.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is seattletimes.com">bramsey@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com