Bush Administration Takes Pro-Government Stance on Heller

This is frustrating. 

The Bush Administration urged the Supreme Court Friday night to rule that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun for private use, but argued that the D.C. Circuit Court went too far in applying that personal right view. The appeals court, the new brief said, seems to have adopted a “more categorical approach” to gun control laws than is proper.

In a move designed at least in part to protect federal gun laws from being struck down, the new brief urged the Justices to uphold an individual right to a gun and adopt a flexible standard for judging specific laws, and then return the pending test case from the District of Columbia back to the Circuit Court for another look. Tellingly, the government’s friend-of-court brief was not labeled as a supporting brief for either side in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290).

The government brief can be downloaded here.

Filed by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, the brief took no direct position on the constitutionality of the 1976 D.C. law that is at issue: a flat ban on private possession of handguns. The Circuit Court, in a ruling last March, struck down the law, finding that it violates the Second Amendment on the understanding that the Amendment protects an individual, not a collective, right. Clement did comment that the D.C. pistol ban “may well fail” if tested under the approach he recommended, but he did not argue that it would necessarily fail.

If an outright ban of handguns “may” not pass Clement’s test, then his test is far too heavily weighted toward oppressive government instead of individual liberty.  I’m extremely angry with the Bush Administration’s refusal to aggressively stand up and protect our right to keep and bear arms.  They are trying to have it both ways by asking the court to rule that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right, thus appeasing 2nd Amendment supporters, while also asking the court to let the government have a very free hand in restricting that right.