WASHINGTON, May 7 — The Justice Department, reversing decades of official government policy on the meaning of the Second Amendment, told the Supreme Court for the first time late Monday that the Constitution "broadly protects the rights of individuals" to own firearms. The position, expressed in a footnote in each of two briefs filed by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, incorporated the view that Attorney General John Ashcroft expressed a year ago in a letter to the National Rifle Association. Mr. Ashcroft said that in contrast to the view that the amendment protected only a collective right of the states...
