Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court has found that the 2nd Amendment protects the right to own a handgun for self-defense in the home. The ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago extended nationwide the logic of the Court's decision two years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Although most of the majority decision and the dissents focused on Constitutional rights (namely, the doctrine of "incorporation" via the 14th Amendment), Justice John Paul Stevens raised interesting questions about guns and participatory democracy. Citing Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein, Justice Stevens noted that gun owners are not at a disadvantage in the democratic process, and citing my book, Disarmed, he argued that if anything their policy preferences receive excessive deference from lawmakers. The relevant section is on pp. 49-50.
As I have noted below, policies structure politics. With handgun bans off the table, it will be interesting to see how gun control and gun rights forces mobilize in the new political order.
Photo courtesy of the Supreme Court.
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