During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Scalia was asked whether lawmakers have the right to ban high-capacity gun magazines without violating a person’s constitutional right to bear arms. The question comes less than two weeks after the Colorado shooting massacre that left 12 dead and dozens more injured — and at a time when neither President Barack Obama nor Congress
appear willing to touch the issue of gun control.
“We’ll see,” Scalia said, suggesting that future court cases will determine what limitations on modern-day weapons are permissible.
“Some undoubtedly are [permissible] because there were some that were acknowledged at the time” the Constitution was written, Scalia said. He cited a practice from that era known as “frighting,” where people “carried around a really horrible weapon just to scare people, like a head axe or something. That was, I believe, a misdemeanor.”
“So yes, there are some limitations that can be imposed,” Scalia said. “What they are will depend on what the society understood were reasonable limitations at the time.”
