WASHINGTON — Chicago and other big cities began wrestling Monday with how to reshape their handgun laws after the Supreme Court placed limits on such local ordinances.
The justices, voting 5-4 in a challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban, ruled the city went too far in prohibiting guns even for self-defense in the home, though the court left room for some restrictions. The court said the constitutional right to bear arms binds states and local governments, just as it does federal officials.
The ruling was a blow to Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has long campaigned against the prevalence of guns on Chicago’s streets. The nation’s third-largest city passed its ordinance in 1982, the only blanket ban in the nation, seven years before Daley was elected.
The Chicago case returns to a lower court while jurisdictions with narrower weapons restrictions, including New York City, may now face legal challenges.
“It certainly casts a long shadow over New York City’s gun control laws,” said James Jacobs, a law professor at New York University and an author of a book on gun control. “This is a serious, serious challenge to the policy of restricting access to weapons.”
The ruling will force some cities and states to make it easier for people to possess firearms and to have licenses to carry them, Jacobs said.
“There are only a few jurisdictions which place significant restrictions on ownership and possession and carrying weapons,” Jacobs said. “The prominent ones are in New York, Massachusetts and San Francisco. All of those will be subject to challenge.”
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group of more than 500 mayors lobbying for stricter regulation of gun sales, said in an e-mailed statement that the ruling won’t stop the organizations’ efforts “to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists.”
The coalition supports measures “respecting the constitutional rights of lawabiding citizens,” Bloomberg said.
“The court’s decision today and its decision in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller both make clear that we can work to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists while at the same time respecting the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens,” Bloomberg said in a separate statement. “That’s what New York City has always done. And I will continue to collaborate with mayors across the country to pursue common-sense, constitutional approaches to protecting public safety.”
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement that the city’s gun-licensing procedures “provide reasonable safeguards while observing the rights of the law-abiding public.”
In Seattle, the King County Superior Court in February invalidated a ban on guns in city parks after it was challenged by the National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation and other groups. King County Superior Court Judge Catherine Shaffer ruled the city can’t preempt state law with the gun rules, which were put in place by former Mayor Greg Nickels.
The Chicago City Council could consider new gun control measures as soon as this week, Daley has said, with the primary goal being the protection of police and emergency workers who respond to service calls at homes.
Information for this article was contributed by Greg Stohr, Henry Goldman, Dina Bass and Tom Moroney of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 06/29/2010