WASHINGTON –– The Justice Department's fresh assertion of individual gun-ownership rights reflects the heavy influence Republican conservatives play in shaping the Bush administration's position on a wide array of social policies, scholars and legal observers say.

"It fits a pattern in that this administration wants to push vigorously on these areas of legal interpretation that it believes previous administrations or courts have gotten wrong," said James M. Lindsey of the Brookings Institution, a liberal-oriented think tank.

Gun-control advocates were dismayed by the administration's move in sending a brief to the Supreme Court that effectively reversed longstanding federal government policy on interpreting the Second Amendment.

The brief filed on behalf of Attorney General John Ashcroft late Monday echoed comments Ashcroft had made a year ago, which caused a stir in the gun-control community at the time.

The issue this time was gun ownership, but the administration has been similarly conservative on other social issues, including school vouchers and government support for religious charities, say scholars and lawyers.

This week's Supreme Court brief outlined a new view of the scope of the Second Amendment.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson said the Justice Department had changed its previous view that the Second Amendment secures only a collective right of states to organize militias.

The brief amendment states, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Gun control advocates and Democratic and Republican administrations going back decades have focused on the first part of that sentence. Increasingly, conservatives have emphasized the part about protecting "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

But they are not the only ones. Some congressional Democrats who are liberal on most issues support an individual's gun ownership rights because they represent districts with large numbers of hunters.

"I find it really so predictable, because this is what they think," Robert Dallek, a history professor and presidential scholar at Boston University, said of the administration's move. "I think they're really terribly reactionary when it comes to these questions of gun control, the environment, federal regulation."

Some other scholars said it is refreshing that the administration to a large extent has done what it said it would do.

Gun control was not a major issue during the 2000 presidential campaign. Still, Bush placed prominent conservatives in his Cabinet – people who think the previous interpretation of the Second Amendment was too narrow.

The constitutionality of federal gun control laws may be at stake in the current debate, although the administration has said it intends to defend laws on the books.

For now, the importance of the new Justice Department stance is primarily symbolic, said Nelson Lund, a conservative George Mason University professor who has written extensively on this.

"It is important that the Justice Department now recognizes the Second Amendment does protect an individual's right to keep and bear arms, but what the practical effect of that is impossible to say at this point," he said.

Ashcroft came under heavy criticism for stating this position last year to the National Rifle Association, and the new filing represents the first time the administration has pushed this view in court.

"They're presenting a very slanted view ... and they haven't thought through the implications of their own position," said Mathew Nosanchuk, litigation director for the pro-gun control Violence Policy Center.

Nonsense, countered Eugene Volokh, a conservative UCLA law professor who has an online archive of historical documents related to the issue.

The idea of collective, state-controlled gun rights is a concoction of the mid- to late 20th century and the push for federal gun control that began in earnest in the 1960s, Volokh said.

Recent scholarship has rediscovered the much older view, rooted in 18th century notions, that the amendment does refer to individuals, Volokh said.

On the Net:
Violence Policy Center: http://www.vpc.org
Volokh's archive: http://www.volokh.com or http://www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/volokh/2amteach/sources.htm

© 2002 The Associated Press