The Pink Pistols and the Second Amendment

The Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on the personal possession of handguns violated the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights by infringing on individuals' rights to bear arms. One lobby group that provided a brief to be considered by the Supreme Court was the Pink Pistols, a lesbian and gay organization advocating for the rights of gays to carry guns. According to the Pink Pistols website, "Armed gays don't get bashed." In their brief to the Supreme Court, Pink Pistols says that gays and lesbians are disproportionately the victims of hate crime violence in their own homes and that laws intended to curtail the ownership of handguns in private homes affects the gay and lesbian communities substantially more than the straight community.

The Pink Pistols are strange bedfellows with other gun lobby groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA). Gun issues tend to be considered "conservative" issues while gay and lesbian rights are more "liberal" in nature. The founder of the Pink Pistols, Doug Krick, a dot com engineer and gay libertarian, doesn't see these two issues as different. Krick says that both relate to lobbying against government interference in the rights of individuals, whether it be the right to carry a gun or the right to carry on a relationship with the partner of your choice.

The Pink Pistols' Supreme Court argument focuses on the right to self-defense. For over two hundred years, the meaning of the Second Amendment has been questioned and challenged. There is no reference in the Second Amendment to self-defense, only the right to bear arms. Many have argued that this right is solely to be used in the defense of the State under the guidance of a militia. Others have extended the meaning out to imply that the right to bear arms means that individuals have the right to defend themselves against other individuals with guns. Today's Supreme Court ruling supports this much wider interpretation.