A sharply divided Supreme Court has settled the issue for now. The Second Amendment to the Constitution does confer upon individuals the right to bear arms.
In the wake of the ruling, big-city mayors across the country are expressing alarm that their gun-control ordinances will be set aside, unleashing a new wave of urban gun violence. That may be an exaggeration. Local gun ordinances have had limited impact. As crime statistics show, gun violence is often most prevalent in cities with the most restrictive gun laws.
That's because city and state borders are porous. Criminals ignore the laws or evade them. Guns purchased legally in Virginia easily find their way into the District of Columbia. It was that city's ordinance that the high court overturned last week.
Cities have taken on the issue of gun control because Congress has left them no choice. Rather than tweaking local ordinances to meet the new Supreme Court rules, gun-control advocates should now focus their efforts where the real problem lies, with Congress and its failure to control gun trafficking.
The powerful National Rifle Association has consistently opposed common-sense laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and Congress has done the NRA's bloody bidding. Nowhere is that more evident than the dangerously irresponsible Tiahrt Amendment. Tacked onto a 2003 Justice Department appropriations bill, the measure, as originally approved, severely restricted the ability of police to trace gun data.
For a time after it was passed, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stopped producing annual reports on guns used in crimes in the nation's 50 largest cities. Pushed by a coalition of mayors and law enforcement officials who objected to its restrictions, Congress modified the measure to allow ATF to issue its annual gun trace reports. Congress also rejected a draconian expansion that would have subjected police to criminal prosecution for sharing gun trace data. But, just making a bad law less bad is not enough.
A number of gun-control bills are pending in Congress that will protect public safety without infringing on people's constitutional rights to possess guns. They deserve to become law.
First, Congress should repeal the Tiahrt Amendment entirely.
It should also end the gun show loophole that allows unlicensed gun dealers to sell guns at gun shows without conducting background checks on buyers.
It should end the "fire sales" that permit licensed gun dealers who've been shut down for selling guns illegally to sell off their existing inventory, incredibly, without conducting background checks.
Rather than acting rationally to protect citizens from gun violence, Congress has allowed the most radical elements of the gun lobby to impose their will with deadly effect. Some 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence, a gun death toll greater than anywhere in Europe or Japan.
Whether you agree with the Supreme Court's decision or not, it has achieved one useful thing. It has focused attention on Congress, the people who really have the power to stem the tide of gun violence.
