by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

In a stunning decision that held the rights of a 17-year-old are not violated by a state gun regulation preventing minors from possessing handguns, the Washington state Supreme Court ruled that “the Second Amendment applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause.”

The majority opinion, written by Justice Richard B. Sanders and issued in mid-February, acknowledges that it does not wait for a US Supreme Court ruling on incorporation. The highest US court is taking up that issue right now in McDonald v. Chicago, for which oral arguments were scheduled for Mar. 2, the day after this issue went to press.

The McDonald case was filed by the Second Amendment Foundation, Illinois State Rifle Association and is named for Otis McDonald, who is a Chicago resident and one of four individual plaintiffs in the case. The National Rifle Association successfully petitioned the high court for time to join the oral arguments, even though its case, NRA v. Chicago, was not accepted for review by the court.

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