The Role of the Court

You can practically see the spittle from the author on this column in the Washington Post about the Heller ruling.  But even with all of its venom, it misses the point entirely.  Here’s the closing:

The court has spoken, but citizens and lawmakers should base future gun-control decisions—both personal and political—on something more substantive than Scalia’s glib opinion.

That “glib opinion” was the opinion of five justices of the Supreme Court and it sets precedent for 2nd Amendment laws across the nation.  The author is saying that people should ignore the Supreme Court and the Constitution and make “both personal and political” decisions based on his opinion. 

While I’m fine with his assertion about personal decisions, political decisions must comply with the Constitution.  I don’t care how much someone might think that a total hand gun ban is a good idea.  Such a ban is unconstitutional.  If the author wants to make such a ban constitutional, then he needs to set about amending the constitution.  We have a process for that. 

This is a point that many of our anti-gun folks seem to be missing.  It is not the role of the Supreme Court to set policies.  Their role is simply to compare a given law to the U.S. Constitution and decide if the law is permissible within the confines of that document.  For example, if the Army decided that it would save a lot of money if we had the soldiers live in the spare rooms of the civilian homes around a base, it doesn’t matter how much the Justices may agree with the idea, it is clearly unconstitutional.