The D.C. government on Friday filed its first major brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the city’s gun ban, arguing on three counts that the District’s unusually tough restrictions on firearm possession do not violate the Constitution.
“The Second Amendment was not intended to tie the hands of government in providing for public safety,” reads D.C.’s 59-page brief. “Reasonable regulations of firearms have been common place since the founding of the Republic.”
Mayor Adrian Fenty on Friday formally named former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger as lead attorney in the D.C. versus Dick Anthony Heller, the first time in 70 years that justices have agreed to reconsider the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. The court’s decision could affect gun laws nationwide, and dozens of states are expected to file briefs on one side or the other.
“All eyes are going to be on Washington, D.C., as we go forward,” Fenty said during a news conference.
A lower court last year tossed out the District’s 30-year-old handgun law as an unreasonable restriction on an individual’s right to bear arms.
Dellinger, along with D.C. Solicitor General Todd Kim, Akin Gump partner Thomas Goldstein and Covington & Burling‘s Robert Long, will argue the case on three points: That the city’s existing law is manifestly reasonable, that the District has the same right as states to restrict firearms, and that the 2nd Amendment speaks only to state militias, not individuals.
“I think none of those points have merit and we will respond to it accordingly,” said Robert Levy, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and lead counsel for Heller.
The respondents must file their first brief by Feb. 3, with arguments following in the spring.
“We continue to maintain that the 2nd Amendment clearly guarantees an individual right to bear arms,” said J. Tucker Martin, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell. “We will make this position clear when the multi-state amicus is filed in February.”
Peter Nickles, Fenty’s soon-to-be interim attorney general, described his legal team as the “superheroes of Supreme Court practice.” Nickles fired Alan Morrison, who wrote much of the brief as counsel to former Attorney General Linda Singer, in late December.
