The right to keep and bear arms is secure in Texas, but in our nation's capital it has been taken away.

In 1976, the Washington City Council passed the nation's toughest gun control law, banning handguns completely and requiring rifles and shotguns to be registered, stored unloaded and locked or disassembled.

The D.C. murder rate was declining before this law; in the next 15 years it jumped 200 percent.

Besides being ineffective, the ban was simply incomprehensible. Under D.C. law, business owners have the right to use a firearm to protect their store cash registers, but they cannot use the same firearm to protect themselves and their families in their homes.

Federal law enforcement officers protecting citizens and officials in the district with firearms cannot use similar protection in their homes.

This prohibition has been challenged in court, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the district's ban was not only unreasonable but unconstitutional.

Next month, for the first time since 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the issue of Second Amendment rights when it hears arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller. The court's decision will have major implications for all Americans.

I have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court with my colleague Jon Tester from Montana - along with Vice President Dick Cheney as president of the Senate, 53 other U.S. senators and 250 members of the House - for the respondent, who simply wishes to exercise his constitutional right to protect himself. It has the most congressional signatures on any amicus brief to the Supreme Court.

The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they put the right to keep and bear arms in the Constitution. It was not an accident. In 1775, the American Revolution began because ordinary farmers decided to fight back against foreign tyranny. Many, if not most, in George Washington's regiments used their own guns.

The Second Amendment says, "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." It is clear that our founders did not use the term "militia" to suggest that gun rights could be used only in an organized army. But gun control advocates have made this argument for years. Continued...