Handgun Murders vs. Justifiable Homicides: McDonald v. City of Chicago

It is popular and has a common sense appeal to say that since self-defense is a fundamental right gun ownership is a fundamental right.  The Supreme Court in McDonald v. City of Chicago makes that point.  Justice Samuel Alito locates that right in the Second Amendment, though it takes a forced reading to do it.  Maybe Justice Clarence Thomas is closer to the mark when he says that it is one of the "privileges and immunities" of citizenship, as Robert Cottrol argues, thinking of the right of the former slaves to protect themselves from the KKK as Reconstruction gave way to Jim Crow and a century of lynchings.


But recognition of the right of self-defense doesn't answer the question of the wisdom of our scarcely regulated right of gun ownership. Julie Cantor of UCLA says we should brace for the impact.  She makes her point graphically in the New England Journal of Medicine today:

 Garen Wintemute, et al. also argue in today's New England Journal that rather than close the so-called "gun show loophole", a"more effective approach would be to subject all private-party gun sales to the screening and record-keeping requirements that apply to sales by licensed retailers. Six states do so already, and nine others regulate all sales of handguns".