Defense attorneys in the past two weeks have filed about 30 motions in D.C. Superior Court asking judges to dismiss gun-carrying charges against their clients based on the Bush administration's assertion that the Second Amendment gives them the right to bear arms.

But judges so far have been turning aside these pretrial motions -- three rejections to date -- and are saying a 15-year-old D.C. Court of Appeals decision upholding the District's gun ownership ban is a binding local precedent.

Robert Levy, senior fellow for constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, a D.C.-based nonprofit think tank, said the rulings shouldn't quiet concerns that the city's gun law might be vulnerable. The motions, he said, are just the first step.

"These guys will be convicted. They'll go up to the Court of Appeals. And the next step is the Supreme Court," Levy said. He agrees with U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's statement that gun bans violate the Second Amendment.

But Mathew Nosanchuk, litigation director for the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control advocacy group, said that as cases go through the court system, "the Ashcroft Justice Department will not be able to continue speaking out of both sides of its mouth on the Second Amendment issue."

People on both sides of the gun control issue have long argued about the meaning and intent of the Second Amendment, which 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."
