Supreme Court strikes down background check for gun buyers

Ruling doesn't cover Brady Law's 5-day waiting period

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Majority opinion: States' rights violated
Minority opinion: 'benefit the people'
Was it working?
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June 27, 1997
Web posted at: 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Requiring police to conduct background checks on would-be gun buyers is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Friday, striking down a key part of the Brady gun control law.

A L S O :

Full text of the decision
Courtesy of The Legal Information Institute
at Cornell Law School

The decision, however, did not cover another controversial portion of the law, which requires a waiting period of up to five days before someone can buy a handgun. The court said it was not addressing that issue and there was nothing to stop authorities from voluntarily conducting a background check during the waiting period.

Twenty-seven states have their own version of Brady-style gun control laws, and President Clinton asked them to "continue to do the background checks."

Friday's ruling also did not deal with the portion of the law which directs the federal government to create a national system for instant background checks by late 1998. Until then, local authorities can still conduct background checks on their own.

Majority opinion: States' rights violated

The high court agreed with the National Rifle Association and other Brady Law critics who said that Congress exceeded its power by imposing the requirement in the 1993 law.

"The federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems, nor command the states' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court.

"Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty."

Scalia's opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Sarah Brady told CNN in December 1996 that a court ruling against the law would hurt the fight against crime.

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Minority opinion: 'benefit the people'

Dissenting were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Writing for the four, Stevens said the background check requirement "is more comparable to a statute requiring local police officers to report the identity of missing children to the Crime Control Center of the Department of Justice than to an offensive federal command to a sovereign state.

"If Congress believes that such a statute will benefit the people of the nation ... we should respect both its policy judgment and its appraisal of its constitutional power," Stevens said.

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The Brady law was challenged in court by county sheriffs from Montana and Arizona.

Citing the Constitution's 10th Amendment, which protects state and local governments from certain federal interference, they maintained that Congress overstepped its authority when it directed local law enforcement officials in their duties.

Was it working?

Friday's ruling striking down the background check is a defeat for the Clinton administration which had defended the requirement as a lawful effort to curb the thousands of handgun murders nationwide each year.

The nationwide handgun-murder total dropped to 11,198 in 1995 after averaging 13,000 a year during the previous three years.

The Justice Department estimated in February that police background checks since 1994 have blocked more than 186,000 illegal over-the-counter gun sales. In 72 percent of those cases, the prospective gun buyer had been convicted or indicted for a felony.

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Related sites:

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Second Ammendment Foundation: Brady Bill documentation
Read the Supreme Court decisions for June 1997
Supreme Court decisions for June 1997
Justices of the Supreme Court

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