Until recently, Department of Justice lawyers were willing to talk to outsiders about pending cases that tested the rights of gun owners under the Second Amendment. But sometime around May 1, the lines of communication went dead. Lawyers in the department would say nothing, and they wouldn’t say why. It was a sure sign that the issue had suddenly taken on dramatically new political dimensions and was being debated at the highest levels at Justice and the White House.
The next thing anyone outside the Justice Department heard came late on May 6, when briefs were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Emerson v. United States, No. 01-8780, and Haney v. United States, No. 01-8272. The briefs, in a footnote, proffered a new DOJ view: The Second Amendment “more broadly” protects the rights of individuals to bear arms and does not relate only to the operation of militias.
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