WATCH: Antonin Scalia Is Still Giving Us Grief


When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died this past winter, he left behind a legacy of conservative views that made him a darling of the right.

He also left behind a wholly new interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He changed our belief in the legality of individual gun use.

Rawstory recently took a close look at the impact that Justice Scalia has had on the endless debates about gun control.

After the worst mass shooting in the history of this country, last night the U.S. Senate took up the question of limiting gun sales to those with mental illness and those on the terrorist watch list. In a mind boggling demonstration of immovable gridlock, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats could muster the votes needed to enact any changes to the current gun laws.

Antonin Scalia is still casting his huge shadow over our thinking on the legality of individuals buying and using guns in this country.

The reason for that shadow goes back only 8 years. That was when the case of Heller vs the District of Columbia came up in the Court. Dick Heller was a police officer who applied for a permit to keep his handgun in his home. He was denied based on a sweeping ban on handguns issued by the District. He sued, and it ended up in the Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the ruling on the decision, which was a 5-4 vote on strictly party lines.  The conservative members of the Court, lead by Scalia, ruled that the Second Amendment was intended to allow people to own guns that were widely in use to be used for self protection. His ruling included handguns and hunting rifles.

For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court did not rule that the Second Amendment assured the legality of gun ownership for state and local militias.

What Scalia wrote, though, does leave many questions open. For example, legal experts are still trying to decide whether the Heller ruling would apply to the AR-15. That was the weapon used in the massacres at Sandy Hook as well as Orlando.

Also open are questions about what kind of restrictions would be allowed on gun purchases and the right to carry weapons.

Although Scalia was a Reagan appointee, and a staunch conservative, its worth recognizing that even he did not believe in completely unrestricted gun ownership.

In his majority opinion in 2008, he wrote:

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Can someone please let the Senate know that Scalia said this?

Featured image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Generic license 2.0

Karen is a retired elementary school teacher with many years of progressive activism behind her. She is the proud mother of three young adults who were all arrested with Occupy Wall Street. To see what she writes about in her spare time, check out her blog at "Empty Nest, Full Life"