George Leef’s latest column for Forbes examines recent federal court cases tackling Second Amendment rights.
A San Francisco ordinance dating from 2007 requires that any handgun kept in a home “be stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock.” Six residents led by Espanola Jackson challenged the legality of that ordinance under Heller. Their complaint stated that the law means “law abiding individuals must render their handguns inoperable or inaccessible precisely when they are needed most….”
You might think that the San Francisco law would fare just the same as did the District of Columbia’s – but you’d be mistaken. The federal district court ruled in favor of the city, and on appeal, so did the Ninth Circuit.
Writing that court’s opinion, Judge Ikuta stated that although the law’s requirements certainly could make self-defense more difficult for an elderly woman like Ms. Jackson, (who testified: “I would have to turn on the light, find my glasses, find the key to the lockbox, insert the key in the lock and unlock the box under the stress of the emergency, and then get my gun before being in position to defend myself. That is not an easy task at my age”) that consideration was outweighed by the city’s interest “in preventing firearms from being stolen and in reducing the number of handgun-related suicides and deadly domestic violence incidents.”
Therefore, the law stood and if Ms. Jackson or anyone else were to be found out of compliance, the city could impose a punishment of up to six months in jail and a fine of $1,000.
Over and over, we have seen the courts whittle away at our constitutional rights with “balancing” arguments like Judge Ikuta’s — arguments that almost always come out in favor of the officials doing the whittling. Public officials who probably perceive little or no personal danger get to tell citizens who do perceive such danger how they must behave. There’s something wrong with that picture.
