The U.S. Supreme Court's historic ruling Thursday for individual gun rights is expected to trigger a spray of new legal challenges to the stiffest gun control laws across the country, with San Francisco among the first cities targeted by the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups.
But the high court left undecided whether the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun laws, and advocates on both sides said the effect on gun laws in California and elsewhere remained unclear.
Buoyed by the high court ruling, NRA spokesman and lawyer Chuck Michel said he planned Friday to challenge a San Francisco ban on possession or sale of firearms or ammunition in city housing projects. The 2007 law, said Michel, flies in the face of the court's reasoning Thursday in a Washington, D.C., case.
"At least the D.C. law paid lip service to allowing people to have a gun. In San Francisco, they don't even bother with the illusion," he said. "The underlying recognition in this case is the philosophy that you don't have to depend on the police to protect you. You have the right to protect yourself and use a gun to do it." The NRA also is expected to target Chicago and other Illinois cities that have outright handgun bans. The court majority, led by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, deemed unconstitutional "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," but noted that right "is not unlimited." It sidestepped Advertisementthe question of whether the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Constitution, applies to states. Michel called that question the first big legal hurdle for gun groups.
The Supreme Court made clear that it was not attacking laws that ban felons or the mentally ill from owning guns, or laws against guns in "sensitive places." Whether city housing projects would pass that test is unclear. The court steered away from any firm ground rules.
"The primary difficulty with the decision is it provides little guidance to lower courts," said Juliet Leftwich, senior counsel with Legal Community Against Violence, a group of lawyers formed in the aftermath of the 101 California Street shootings in 1993 in San Francisco.
Leftwich and other gun control advocates said they were saddened but not surprised by the decision, given the court's conservative tilt.
"We do anticipate there will be challenges at the state level. The first attacks are going to be on more widespread gun bans," said Kay Holmen, California chapter president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which ranks the state tops in the country in the strength of its gun laws. "We are pleased that ... they've also indicated reasonable restrictions can and should apply."
One legal scholar said it seemed clear, from reading Scalia's opinion, that lower courts would "immediately" apply the high court's ruling to states. Though it came from a federal jurisdiction, the case amounts to an extreme local law, said Robert Weisberg, director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
"It's close to inevitable that it would apply to the states, even though this decision can't strictly decide that," said Weisberg. "I would say this will lead to invalidation of some (gun control) statutes, but not a great number of them."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress, lamented what she called "a monumental decision." In a statement, she said it will "open the door to litigation against every gun safety law that states have passed — assault weapons bans, trigger locks, and all the rest of it."
The court opinion focused on common handguns used in home self-defense, and some gun control advocates doubted a threat to assault weapon bans.
State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who authored California's assault weapons ban in 1999, took a measured tone.
"I understand the right to bear arms — the problem is in how it is expressed. My concern has always been the proliferation of guns," he said in a statement. "I'm glad that the Court recognized some ability to regulate guns —we will now have to figure out what exactly that means."
A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he had no statement about the decision.
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