Virginia’s attorney general opposes D.C. gun ban

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell said Tuesday he will sign on to a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the District of Columbia’s handgun ban.

The brief, being written by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a lower-court ruling that declared the ban an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment.

Arkansas’ attorney general is also supporting Abbott’s brief, while attorneys general in Maryland, New York, Illinois and Hawaii said they will file briefs supporting the District’s ban.

“The right to bear arms secured in the Bill of Rights is a right ‘of the people,’ ” said McDonnell, a Republican. “We believe that our founders declared, in the Second Amendment, that American citizens have the personal right to bear arms as individuals. ... [This] case will likely be the most important Second Amendment case in American history. The result will have significant implications on individual liberty and the power of government.”

The case will be the court’s first review of gun-control laws since 1939.

The high court expects to hear oral arguments in Heller vs. District of Columbia in March, with a decision coming by June on the constitutionality of the city’s 31-year-old handgun ban.

The lawsuit, brought by six D.C. residents who said the city’s gun laws were too restrictive, was dismissed in the city’s favor by a U.S. District Court judge earlier this year. That dismissal was later overturned by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

jrogalsky@dcexaminer.com

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