The Long and the Short of the Second Amendment

If you, like me, were wondering how support for the D.C. gun ban can be reconciled with the belief that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms, you might want to check out Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe’s op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal . Tribe, who switched to the individual-right view of the Second Amendment several years ago, nevertheless urges the Supreme Court to uphold the D.C. law when it considers the case later this month. He says the Second Amendment does not guarantee "an absolute right to possess the weapons of one’s choice" and so does not rule out a handgun ban. "Under any plausible standard of review," he writes, "a legislature’s choice to limit the citizenry to rifles, shotguns and other weapons less likely to augment urban violence need not, and should not, be viewed as an unconstitutional abridgment of the right of the people to keep or bear arms. &...