WASHINGTON - The Second Amendment's provisions protecting the right to keep and bear arms apply only to the federal government, not the 50 states and the District of Columbia, lawyers for the nation's capital argued Friday in a written brief to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The district is seeking to preserve its three-decade ban on handgun possession after a federal appeals court ruled in March the ban is an unconstitutional infringement on an individual's right to keep and bear arms.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take the case, setting up what could be a landmark ruling on the scope of the Second Amendment. The court has not addressed the issue in a significant way for nearly 70 years.
"We are going to argue not just the most significant legal case in the history of the District of Columbia, but one of the most significant legal challenges in the history of the country," Mayor Adrian Fenty said at a news conference Friday in which he introduced former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger as the lead attorney.
The Associated Press
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