FALLACIES ABOUT GUN RIGHTS

In the never-ending debate on these pages over gun ownership, those who fa- vor expansive gun rights appear to have adopted one (or more) of three lines of argument:

The Constitution protects the individual right to gun ownership.

The crime rate in Great Britain (where gun ownership is strictly controlled) is “skyrocketing.”

In colonial days, the vast majority of people owned guns.

Each premise, however, is erroneous. In our constitutional system, the ultimate arbiter of what the Constitution

says is the Supreme Court. One may not agree with its rulings (for example, many people do not approve of its ruling extending First Amendment protec- tions to flag burning or Fourth Amendment protections to the decision to ter- minate a pregnancy), but, under our system of government, once the Supreme Court has ruled a certain way, that ruling stands as the law of the land. On the issue of whether the Second Amendment encompasses an individual’s right to possess firearms, the Supreme Court has spoken. And the answer is that it does not. Like it or not, that is the law of the land. It is true that the state con- stitutions in both Vermont and New Hampshire provide for the protection of individual gun ownership. In neither instance, however, is such a right ab- solute. For example, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that a law prohibiting felons from possessing firearms is not unconstitutional. Similarly, a Vermont law prohibiting people from carrying loaded firearms in their vehi- cles was held to be permissible.