I wonder if Clarence Thomas owns a gun.

In 2003, Washington resident Dick Heller, who lives in one of the city’s tougher districts, lodged a suit against the local authorities saying his constitutional right to bear arms was being violated. Although his case was initially rejected, he won on appeal to a federal appeals court in March.

Washington officials in turn then lodged a case with the Supreme Court in September insisting that it must rule on the extent of access to handguns, the weapon of choice in two-thirds of robberies and assaults.

Handguns are also used in half of the 15,000 murders across the country every year, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

“Faced with the evidence that handguns pose a particularly serious threat to public safety, the council chose to ban handguns because it concluded that less restrictive regulations would be ineffective,” the city said in its petition to the court.

“Whatever right the second amendment guarantees, it does not require the district to stand by while its citizens die.”

If the court decides to examine the case, it would likely be heard sometime between February and April, with a ruling before the end of June, just a few months before the November 2008 presidential elections.

To date the Supreme Court has rarely considered the issue of the right to bear arms.

In the 19th century, it determined that the founding fathers meant the amendment to remain the remit of federal laws and left all the states in the union free to draw up their own gun laws.

Then in 1939, the court upheld a law requiring that arms transported from state to state should be registered.

But all states have formulated their own restrictions, which vary wildly.

Heller believes that the laws in Washington, which are similar to those in many big cities such as Chicago, New York or Detroit, are not just unconstitutional but also ineffective.

Last year in the city with 580,000 residents, there were 169 murders, 137 by firearms.

“This case presents the court a unique opportunity to correct a persistent misconception that the people do not actually enjoy a right that is specifically enumerated in the constitution,” Heller says in his petition.

“’The people’ – individuals in our country – retain the right to keep and bear arms.”

His case is being backed by the American Civil Rights Union which says in his support: “This case presents questions of the highest importance, involving the fundamental meaning of the second amendment.

“In over 200 years, this court has still not resolved the basic questions regarding the amendment’s meaning.”

Having lived in a couple of big cities with gun-related violence, I have to confess, I go back and forth on the issues of gun regulation. It seems to me that there is too much corruption in our police forces to properly understand why there are so many shooting deaths in urban areas. Then there is the fact that we truly live in “interesting times.” I’ve also been the victim of racist terrorism; I am very sure my family was glad we was armed when our mailbox kept getting bombed.

What interests me is that the SCOTUS so rarely takes on these kinds of cases. Any guesses on how they could rule, or if they’ll even take it up? I suppose that a Bush-loving majority on the court could rule in favor of Heller, but then again I don’t know. Truly, do Republicans in the Village want District Brothers to be armed? Given the fact that so many Republicans are diaper-wearing chickenhawk cowards, I wonder.