Scalia Warns Guns Could be Regulated

(Newsroom America) -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia warned Sunday that the Second Amendment left some room for guns to be regulated, adding to a growing debate over firearms following the mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., earlier this month.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Scalia, one of the high court's originalists - those who interpret the Constitution in the context of the times in which it was signed and adopted - said in regards to the landmark 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller, that the extent of gun ownership "will have to be decided in future cases."

Scalia's comments come in the wake of the mass shootings, in which suspected gunman James Holmes used a high-powered semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity, 100-round magazine, among other weapons, to kill a dozen people and wound 58 more at a theater in the Denver suburb.

The comments also come as a renewed debate over gun control laws simmers in the wake of the shootings, the latest in a string of massacres over the past few years that have left scores dead and wounded.

Democrats on Sunday said they planned to introduce new legislation that would "make it harder for criminals to anonymously stockpile ammunition through the Internet, as was done before the recent tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado."

President Obama has weighed in delicately on the issue, no doubt because this is an election year.

"I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms," he said last week. "But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities."

In his interview, Scalia said that when the Second Amendment was ratified, there were already exceptions to gun rights, including the carrying of a "really horrible weapon just to scare people like a head ax or something."

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said changing gun laws wouldn't "make all bad things go away."

"I don't happen to believe that America needs new gun laws," he said from London.

He said a lot of what suspected shooter Holmes did in Aurora was against the law.

"But the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening," he said.

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