The U.S. Supreme Court stands firmly behind the Constitutional right to bear arms, but it continues to recognize that communities have to be able to regulate deadly weapons.
This month the court rejected yet another National Rifle Association attempt to loosen gun restrictions, this time in San Francisco. The law passed in 2007 requires handgun owners to either store their guns in a safe or disable them with a trigger lock.
Who wouldn’t want to do this, especially in a home with children? Well, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the dissenters, and the NRA. But we suspect there’s a pretty strong consensus among the public that it’s common sense.
The court majority, fortunately, declined to take the case, indicating once again that regulations promoting gun safety do not violate the Second Amendment. It also let stand San Francisco’s 1994 ordinance banning the local sale of hollow-point bullets that shatter on contact.
The 2007 ordinance was a response to the number of deaths, often of children, resulting from unlocked handguns in households. An estimated 55 percent of U.S. homes with children and firearms have one or more firearms in an unlocked place. We see heartbreaking stories every year of kids who thought they’d found a nifty toy killing themselves or another child. Children in the United States are at least 10 times as likely to be killed by firearms compared to children in other developed nations.
Justice Thomas said he believes San Franciscans need guns at the ready when people are “most vulnerable.” including when they are “bathing.”
Whoa. Perhaps he likes to shower while armed, but that’s a little kinky for San Francisco.
The court ruling will help to prevent tragic deaths of those who lack the judgment to handle loaded weapons they happen to find lying around the house.
