Petitioners’ sophistic “reasonableness” arguments were likewise familiar to the Framers—and rejected. Colonial Americans were conversant with the works of Cesare Beccaria, whose 1764 treatise ON CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS founded the science of criminology. John Adams cited Beccaria to open his argument at the Boston Massacre trial. 3 LEGAL PAPERS OF JOHN ADAMS 242. In a passage Jefferson copied into his “Commonplace Book” of wise excerpts from philosophers and poets, Beccaria decried the “False Utility” of laws that
disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code . . . will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, andwhich, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty. . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. . . . [These] laws [are] not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree. . . .Thomas Jefferson, COMMONPLACE BOOK 314 (1926).“If it be thought that the privilege is outmoded in the conditions of this modern age, then the thing to do is to take it out of the Constitution, not to whittle it down by the subtle encroachments of judicial opinion.” Ullman v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 427- 28 (1956) (citation omitted).
Petitioners plainly disagree with the Framers’ Second Amendment policy choices. Petitioners’ remedy must be found within the Constitution’s Fifth Article, not with linguistic sophistries or an anemic standard of review that would deprive the right of any real force.
V. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE NATION’S
CAPITAL MUST OBEY THE CONSTITUTION.The Constitution, and its Bill of Rights—including the Second Amendment—are the supreme law of the land. U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 1. “That the Constitution is in effect . . . in the District has been so often determined in the affirmative that it is no longer an open question.” O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U.S. 516, 541 (1933).
Petitioners’ legislative authority is not above the Constitution, but derived from it; a delegation of Congress’s authority to legislate for the District. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 17. That power “is plenary; but it does not . . . authorize a denial to the inhabitants of any constitutional guaranty not plainly inapplicable.” O’Donoghue, 289 U.S. at 539.“If, before the District was set off, Congress had passed an unconstitutional act, affecting its inhabitants, it would have been void. If done after the District was created, it would have been equally void.” Id. at 541 (citation omitted).
...For example, Congress may operate public schools in the District of Columbia, a power otherwise reserved to the states. But such schools cannot be segregated. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954).
Indeed, because the Constitution with its Bill of Rights applies directly to the federal government, of which the city is a creature, Petitioners are bound to respect even those rights that are not incorporated as against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. See Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U.S. 363 (1974)