(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-21 12:06

Arguments probably will be in March, with a decision expected before the end of June. A ruling could energize people on both sides of the issue for the fall campaigns.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, who as New York mayor sued the gun industry for letting criminals get guns, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that the case "is a very, very strong description of how important personal liberties are in this country and how we have to respect them."

Giuliani now says the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to own handguns and is not, as he previously argued, limited to the rights of states to maintain citizen militias.

The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in US v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. That decision supported the collective rights view, but it did not squarely answer the question in the view of many constitutional scholars. Chief Justice John Roberts said at his confirmation hearing that the correct reading of the Second Amendment was "still very much an open issue."

The Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Washington banned handguns in 1976, saying it was designed to reduce violent crime in the nation's capital.

The City Council that adopted the ban said it was justified because "handguns have no legitimate use in the purely urban environment of the District of Columbia."

The District is making several arguments in defense of the restriction, including claiming that the Second Amendment involves militia service. It also said the ban is constitutional because it limits the choice of firearms but does not prohibit residents from owning any guns at all. Rifles and shotguns are legal, if kept under lock or disassembled. Businesses may have guns for protection.

Chicago has a similar handgun ban, but few other gun-control laws are as strict as the District's.

Four states -- Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New York -- urged the Supreme Court to take the case because broad application of the appeals court ruling would threaten "all federal and state laws restricting access to firearms."

Dick Anthony Heller, 65, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home -- about a mile from the court -- for protection.

The laws in question in the case do not "merely regulate the possession of firearms," Heller said. Instead, they "amount to a complete prohibition of the possession of all functional firearms within the home."

If the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to have guns, "the laws must yield," he said.

Opponents say the ban plainly has not worked because guns still are readily available, through legal and illegal means. Although the city's homicide rate has declined dramatically since peaking in the early 1990s, Washington still ranks among the nation's highest murder cities.

According to the District's medical examiner, there were 177 homicides in 2006. Of those, 135 were firearm-related. In 1976, the medical examiner said that 135 of the District's 207 homicides were firearm-related, according to a Washington Post article from that era.

The US Court Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 for Heller in March. Judge Laurence Silberman said reasonable regulations still could be permitted but that the ban went too far.

The Bush administration, which has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights, has yet to weigh in on the case.

The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290.

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