An American’s home is his arsenal

For millions of Americans the political highpoint of 2008 is now behind them. The precise day is forever inscribed in their hearts as one of glorious ratification of one of America's core freedoms: June 26, when the US Supreme Court for the first time affirmed by a narrow majority of 5-4 the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

The decision was a frightful blow to the gun controllers. "This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country," wailed the New York Times in an editorial. "A frightening decision and a return to the days of the Wild West," said Mayor Richard M Daley of Chicago, a city to which gunfire has been street muzak for many decades.

The Supreme Court decision was written by the court's peppery ultra-conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia, who became positively lyrical in his paean to the handgun: "There are many reasons that a citizen may prefer a handgun for home defence: it is easier to store in a location that is readily accessible in an emergency; it cannot easily be redirected or wrestled away by an attacker; it is easier to use for those without the upper-body strength to lift and aim a long gun; it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police. Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defence in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid."

Oddly enough, considering the endless political battling over gun rights, the nation's highest court has only once before ruled on the citizens' inherent right to bear arms, and that was in the Roosevelt era. Gun control was one of the prime goals of the New Deal, partly as a backlash from the Tommy Gun era of Prohibition and the roaring Twenties.

Cunningly, FDR's strategy was to attack gun rights not by a head-on assault on the Second Amendment but by the devious but always deadly route of taxation. Taking weapons across state lines and even transferring ownership became costly activities. The Supreme Court affirmed this in 1939, simultaneously emphasising that the Amendment confirmed the collective rights of a militia, not individual citizens, and that the arms did not include sawn-off shot guns or assault weapons.

For the next half-century the gun controllers pushed steadily forward, given helpful shoves by the assassinations of the Sixties, Reagan's narrow escape and the crack wars of the 1980s. The Democratic Party, listening particularly to its liberal, urban and female base, made gun control a major plank.

The recoil came in 2000, with Al Gore's defeat at the hands of George Bush. Guns, not Ralph Nader, were a prime factor in that narrow loss. Gore's endorsement of gun control cost the Democrats Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Colorado and the mountain states. The Democrats began to sideline the issue. The gun lobby weathered the crises of school shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech. The Bush presidencies saw membership of the Supreme Court swing steadily to the right.

Europeans, incredulous at America's 50m households holding about 250m guns, usually miss two important points. 'Home defence' is a phrase with profound reverberations, as Scalia emphasised strongly in such paragraphs as the one cited above. And the gun lobby has been successful in anchoring their cause in the notion of a basic 'freedom', in an era when Americans correctly feel that freedoms - against unreasonable searches and seizures, or the right to a speedy trial - are being relentlessly eroded by government.

June 26 truly did open a new page in American judicial history, as politicians quickly recognized. In contrast to the New York Times's editors, the Democratic nominee for the presidency, Barack Obama, took a modulated position but one which prudently avoided any whisper of criticism of the Court, or of Scalia.

Obama is from Mayor Daley's city. He emphasised that the court had indicated that prudent restrictions on gun ownership were not at risk. (Of course they are, and indeed are already the object of legal challenge in Chicago.) But his voice was at its clearest and most forceful when he said that he entirely agreed with the court that Americans have the right to bear arms.

The National Rifle Association is raising the prospect that Obama, as president, might sponsor legislation to nullify the court's decision. Don't believe it. The NRA needs a threat to keep the membership high and the donations rolling in. Obama, as candidate or president, is not stupid. He'll let the gun issue lie. That particular liberal cause will be on the shelf for many years to come. ·