PUBLISHED 1/24/08 ----

Eighteen elected prosecutors, including district attorneys who represent New York, Boston, Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland and Atlanta, have posed an interesting argument before the U.S. Supreme Court.

What if reversing Washington, D.C.’s controversial handgun ban — a move the nation’s highest court will start to consider in March — had a previously unforeseen consequence? What if, by recognizing a broad individual right to gun ownership, the court might be endangering state and local firearms laws?

A federal appeals court ruled last March that Washington’s handgun ban violated the Second Amendment, the first time a gun-control law had been struck down on that basis. The Supreme Court will hear arguments starting in about six weeks on the constitutionality of the ban.
In arguments filed Jan. 11, the 18 prosecutors, led by Robert Morgenthau of New York, said the Supreme Court ruling that upholds the lower court’s decision could cast doubt on an array of gun laws, from assault weapon restrictions to sentence enhancements for using a firearm in the commission of a crime.

The Bush administration took the same position, shocking gun-rights and gun-control advocates alike by suggesting in a court brief filed the same day that firearms should be subject to “reasonable regulations.”

Defendants all across the country have been invoking the Second Amendment in challenging their convictions and sentences, the prosecutors say. As a result, the prosecutors said, the Supreme Court runs the risk of decriminalizing “a breathtakingly broad range of dangerous conduct.”

The prosecutors said a number of public-safety laws could be in jeopardy, including California’s prohibition on semiautomatic assault weapons, bans on gun possession by convicted felons, laws requiring permits for concealed weapons, and increased sentences for use of a gun during certain crimes.

If defendants fight prosecution on Second Amendment grounds, the district attorneys said, the prosecution’s weakened position in plea negotiations — which typically resolve 95 percent of all state criminal cases — would prompt more defendants to take their chances at trial, leading to a further courtroom backlog. Second Amendment advocates routinely cite protection from crime as the primary reason they oppose gun restrictions. The prosecutors’ brief suggests things may not be that simple.
In this litigious and violent country, they rarely are.