The Rights of the People by David K. Shipler Read Free Book Online

with the police on the street, while raising the dangers from firearms.
    It was the Supreme Court’s first comprehensive decision on the scope of the Second Amendment. The justices in
District of Columbia v. Heller
found narrowly, five to four, that the framers meant the right as an individual one, not restricted to members of state militias, as the minority believed. The Second Amendment was poorly written: “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.”
    Parrying each other with intricate grammatical and historical arguments, the justices on both sides left a good deal open to further challenge. At first, the Court ruled only that people in a federal jurisdiction had the right to functioning guns in their own homes. Two years later, the same five-to-four majority applied the Second Amendment to state and local governments. The rulings left intact Washington, D.C.’s and other jurisdictions’ laws against carrying firearms on the street. “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment,” Scalia wrote in
Heller
, “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.” This language was repeated in the 2010 opinion, indicating how far states could go in limiting gun possession. 16
    The District of Columbia complied with the
Heller
decision by enacting a strict licensing law for guns at home. Firearms in the street remained illegal, and defense attorneys discerned no shift in the gun arrests being prosecuted. Nor did the police change the tactics they had used before the Court’s ruling, during my nights with the Power Shift.
    The political spectrum gets scrambled out on the street. Liberals who favor strict gun control oppose the intrusive searches, which erode the Fourth Amendment but facilitate police in finding guns. Conservatives who oppose gun control favor more police power to search, which helps them find guns. You might say that the rights under the Second and Fourth Amendments rise and fall together.
    A radio call came about an SUV in the left lane behind us. LeFande slowed down and stopped in front of the vehicle, which was trapped by another patrol car behind. The black driver was told to get out, and he was frisked. “What are you patting me down for?” he protested.
    “That’s routine for us, dude,” said a black cop. “You got a car withtinted windows.” The meter showed only 17 percent of the light getting through.
    “You want to search the car?” asked the driver, spitting it out as a challenge and a curse. Neill said OK, was joined by two or three officers in the search, and found nothing. The driver looked bitterly victorious, part of a school of black men, frequently hassled by the police, who offer the search as a means of defiance to prove the cops wrong, to show them up as stupid or ineffective. Sometimes, people would lash the officers with the consent as if it were a righteous demand: “Search the car!”
    LeFande pulled up beside a red sedan. “That’s a girl,” Neill said dismissively, and we moved on. What drew them to check the car? It came out of a high crime area and didn’t make a full stop, Neill explained.
    He then got out and approached two black men, in their twenties, wearing long white shirts. They pulled up their shirts before the cops even asked, and then submitted to pat-downs.
    The next target was a black Mustang with tinted windows. A young black man was ordered out from behind the wheel and was patted down while he kept explaining, “I live right here.” The tint meter showed only 16 percent, and Neill asked permission to