Gun Shy - Reason Magazine

Gun Shy - Reason Magazine

Jacob Sullum is pleased that five Supreme Court justices upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms but worries that four justices believe that democracy should be able to override individual rights:

"In their dissenting opinions, Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer (joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor) worry that overturning gun control laws undermines democracy. If 'the people' want to ban handguns, they say, 'the people' should be allowed to implement that desire through their elected representatives.

"What if the people want to ban books that offend them, establish an official church, or authorize police to conduct warrantless searches at will? Those options are also foreclosed by constitutional provisions that apply to the states by way of the 14th Amendment. The crucial difference between a pure democracy and a constitutional democracy like ours is that sometimes the majority does not decide."