What does Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Heller teach us about the limits of 2nd Amendment rights?
About this video
This video discusses an important passage in Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Heller that reassured people the ruling did not put all gun laws up for grabs. In a 5-4 decision, the passage may have been included to win Justice Kennedy's vote, and it signaled that laws keeping guns from felons and controlling firearm sales would remain in place.
You'll be able to
- explain why Justice Scalia included language limiting the reach of Heller.
- give examples of gun regulations the Heller opinion signaled would survive.
- explain how a close 5-4 vote can shape what a majority opinion says.
Key words
- 5-4 decision
- A Supreme Court ruling where five justices are in the majority and four dissent.
- majority opinion
- The written explanation of the Court's decision, joined by most of the justices.
- scuttlebutt
- Informal talk or rumor about something.
- assuage
- To calm or ease someone's worries.
- felony
- A serious crime, such as a violent crime, usually punished by more than a year in prison.
Transcript
This was an incredibly important line in the Heller opinion. The intuition or the scuttlebutt, as it were, about this particular line was that the Heller decision was a 5-4 decision. There's nine justices on the Supreme Court. The scuttlebutt about this is that this section was included in Justice Scalia's opinion to ensure that Justice Kennedy, who was on the court at the time, joined the majority. What it did was essentially assuage the concerns that many had that everything now was up for grabs. That you would have persons convicted of violent felonies claiming that they had rights to keep and bear arms. That you would have people building explosive devices in their basement and say that I have a right to have this. What this language was supposed to do was essentially make sure that everybody understood that even though the court was clearly breaking new ground. Again, this is the first case in the 200-year history of the Second Amendment Heller,
to hold that there's an individual right to keep in bear arms for personal purposes. That a lot of the regulation that are on the books about keeping guns out of the hands of felons making sure that there are controls on the sales of firearms, et cetera, we're not going to go by the wayside.
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