SUPREME COURT RULING:
SUPREME COURT RULING:
0 Comments | Charleston Gazette, The, Jul 5, 2010 | by Rusty Marks
Charleston city officials don’t expect a recent Supreme Court decision questioning local government handgun bans to affect Charleston’s gun ordinances.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 that the Second Amendment right for private citizens to keep guns applies to state and local governments. The ruling in McDonald vs. Chicago held that a nearly all-out handgun ban in the city of Chicago should take into account a citizen’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
The ruling comes in the wake of another 5-4 Supreme Court ruling from 2008 – known as the Heller ruling – where the court held that the Second Amendment provides citizens with a fundamental right to keep weapons in their homes for self-defense.
But officials in Charleston don’t expect the two rulings will affect the city’s gun ordinances.
“We don’t think [our ordinance] is anti-Second Amendment,” Mayor Danny Jones said shortly after the McDonald ruling.
In Charleston, guns are prohibited in City Hall and on city property. A second ordinance requires a three-day waiting period for people who want to buy a gun in the city, and limits gun purchases to one per month.
Charleston City Council President Tom Lane said handgun dealers in the city are also required to have a business license allowing them to sell guns.
The waiting period and one-gun-per-month limit come from a 1993 city ordinance, when Charleston City Council voted 14-12 in favor of the limits
self defense weapons