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Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights, at ; see also id. By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. Maine , U. See 1 Blackstone , — His description of it cannot possibly be thought to tie it to militia or military service. Other contemporary authorities concurred. See G. Stephens ed. Blizard, Desultory Reflections on Police 59—60 And, of course, what the Stuarts had tried to do to their political enemies, George III had tried to do to the colonists.

That provoked polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep arms. Dickerson ed. They understood the right to enable individuals to defend themselves.

See also W. There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Williams , U. Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.

Before turning to limitations upon the individual right, however, we must determine whether the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment comports with our interpretation of the operative clause. Wright ed. Peterson ed. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men.

From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force.

To be sure, Congress need not conscript every able-bodied man into the militia, because nothing in Article I suggests that in exercising its power to organize, discipline, and arm the militia, Congress must focus upon the entire body. Although the militia consists of all able-bodied men, the federally organized militia may consist of a subset of them. Lloyd eds. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections.

Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny. Relationship between Prefatory Clause and Operative Clause.

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. This is what had occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.

The debate with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, as with other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, was not over whether it was desirable all agreed that it was but over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitution.

During the ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric.

Storing ed. Jensen ed. Federalists responded that because Congress was given no power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, such a force could never oppress the people. Young ed. It was understood across the political spectrum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.

The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. Baldwin , U. For Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia, which must include the authority to say who will belong to the organized force. Our interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment.

Four States adopted analogues to the Federal Second Amendment in the period between independence and the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

Two of them—Pennsylvania and Vermont—clearly adopted individual rights unconnected to militia service. In , Vermont adopted the identical provision, except for inconsequential differences in punctuation and capitalization.

See Vt. This could plausibly be read to support only a right to bear arms in a militia—but that is a peculiar way to make the point in a constitution that elsewhere repeatedly mentions the militia explicitly.

Candler ed. See State v. Huntly , 3 Ired. First, Art. XVII, in 3 Thorpe , Blanding , 20 Mass. The analogy makes no sense if firearms could not be used for any individual purpose at all. We therefore believe that the most likely reading of all four of these pre-Second Amendment state constitutional provisions is that they secured an individual right to bear arms for defensive purposes. Other States did not include rights to bear arms in their pre constitutions—although in Virginia a Second Amendment analogue was proposed unsuccessfully by Thomas Jefferson.

Boyd ed. Between and , nine States adopted Second Amendment analogues. See Tenn. And with one possible exception that we discuss in Part II—D—2, 19th-century courts and commentators interpreted these state constitutional provisions to protect an individual right to use arms for self-defense.

See n. State , 5 Yer. The historical narrative that petitioners must endorse would thus treat the Federal Second Amendment as an odd outlier, protecting a right unknown in state constitutions or at English common law, based on little more than an overreading of the prefatory clause.

Justice Stevens relies on the drafting history of the Second Amendment—the various proposals in the state conventions and the debates in Congress. It is dubious to rely on such history to interpret a text that was widely understood to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to fashion a new one.

But even assuming that this legislative history is relevant, Justice Stevens flatly misreads the historical record. It is true, as Justice Stevens says, that there was concern that the Federal Government would abolish the institution of the state militia. That concern found expression, however, not in the various Second Amendment precursors proposed in the State conventions, but in separate structural provisions that would have given the States concurrent and seemingly nonpre-emptible authority to organize, discipline, and arm the militia when the Federal Government failed to do so.

See Veit 17, 20 Virginia proposal ; 4 J. The Second Amendment precursors, by contrast, referred to the individual English right already codified in two and probably four State constitutions.

The Federalist-dominated first Congress chose to reject virtually all major structural revisions favored by the Antifederalists, including the proposed militia amendments. Post , at But so was the highly influential minority proposal in Pennsylvania, yet that proposal, with its reference to hunting, plainly referred to an individual right. See 2 Documentary Hist. Other than that erroneous point, Justice Stevens has brought forward absolutely no evidence that those proposals conferred only a right to carry arms in a militia.

Saladino eds. That simply does not comport with our longstanding view that the Bill of Rights codified venerable, widely understood liberties. We now address how the Second Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century. See post , at 27, n. It most certainly does not refer to the examination of a variety of legal and other sources to determine the public understanding of a legal text in the period after its enactment or ratification.

That sort of inquiry is a critical tool of constitutional interpretation. As we will show, virtually all interpreters of the Second Amendment in the century after its enactment interpreted the amendment as we do. Three important founding-era legal scholars interpreted the Second Amendment in published writings. All three understood it to protect an individual right unconnected with militia service. He equated that right, absent the religious and class-based restrictions, with the Second Amendment.

The right to self-defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine the right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In , William Rawle, a prominent lawyer who had been a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly that ratified the Bill of Rights, published an influential treatise, which analyzed the Second Amendment as follows:.

No clause in the constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both. Like Tucker, Rawle regarded the English game laws as violating the right codified in the Second Amendment.

That is wrong. He then equated the English right with the Second Amendment:. This comparison to the Declaration of Right would not make sense if the Second Amendment right was the right to use a gun in a militia, which was plainly not what the English right protected. State , 50 Tenn. Antislavery advocates routinely invoked the right to bear arms for self-defense. Never was this efficient weapon more needed in just self-defence, than now in Kansas, and at least one article in our National Constitution must be blotted out, before the complete right to it can in any way be impeached.

We have found only one early 19th-century commentator who clearly conditioned the right to keep and bear arms upon service in the militia—and he recognized that the prevailing view was to the contrary.

A different construction however has been given to it. Oliver, The Rights of an American Citizen The 19th-century cases that interpreted the Second Amendment universally support an individual right unconnected to militia service.

In Houston v. Moore , 5 Wheat. If it have, it confirms and illustrates, rather than impugns the reasoning already suggested. Even clearer was Justice Baldwin. In the famous fugitive-slave case of Johnson v. Tompkins , 13 F. Many early 19th-century state cases indicated that the Second Amendment right to bear arms was an individual right unconnected to militia service, though subject to certain restrictions.

We will only instance the restriction upon the migration of free blacks into this State, and upon their right to bear arms. Commonwealth , 2 Va. The claim was obviously not that blacks were prevented from carrying guns in the militia.

State , 1 Gill , Md. But the grant of this privilege cannot be construed into the right in him who keeps a gun to destroy his neighbor. No rights are intended to be granted by the constitution for an unlawful or unjustifiable purpose. Blume ed. It is not possible to read this as discussing anything other than an individual right unconnected to militia service.

In Nunn v. State , 1 Ga. Its opinion perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause of the Second Amendment furthers the purpose announced in the prefatory clause, in continuity with the English right:. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. Likewise, in State v.

Chandler , 5 La. State , 21 Tenn. The court then adopted a sort of middle position, whereby citizens were permitted to carry arms openly, unconnected with any service in a formal militia, but were given the right to use them only for the military purpose of banding together to oppose tyranny. In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was an outpouring of discussion of the Second Amendment in Congress and in public discourse, as people debated whether and how to secure constitutional rights for newly free slaves.

See generally S. Since those discussions took place 75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, they do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources. Yet those born and educated in the early 19th century faced a widespread effort to limit arms ownership by a large number of citizens; their understanding of the origins and continuing significance of the Amendment is instructive.

Blacks were routinely disarmed by Southern States after the Civil War. Needless to say, the claim was not that blacks were being prohibited from carrying arms in an organized state militia. Their arms are taken from them by the civil authorities…. Thus, the right of the people to keep and bear arms as provided in the Constitution is infringed.

A joint congressional Report decried:. The view expressed in these statements was widely reported and was apparently widely held. Section 14 stated:. Globe, 39th Cong. Similar discussion attended the passage of the Civil Rights Act of and the Fourteenth Amendment.

It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense. Every lateth-century legal scholar that we have read interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual right unconnected with militia service. The most famous was the judge and professor Thomas Cooley, who wrote a massively popular Treatise on Constitutional Limitations. Concerning the Second Amendment it said:. How far it is in the power of the legislature to regulate this right, we shall not undertake to say, as happily there has been very little occasion to discuss that subject by the courts.

That Cooley understood the right not as connected to militia service, but as securing the militia by ensuring a populace familiar with arms, is made even clearer in his work, General Principles of Constitutional Law. The militia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform military duty, or of a small number only, or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check.

The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose.

But this enables government to have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order.

All other post-Civil War 19th-century sources we have found concurred with Cooley. One example from each decade will convey the general flavor:. But a militia would be useless unless the citizens were enabled to exercise themselves in the use of warlike weapons. To preserve this privilege, and to secure to the people the ability to oppose themselves in military force against the usurpations of government, as well as against enemies from without, that government is forbidden by any law or proceeding to invade or destroy the right to keep and bear arms….

The clause is analogous to the one securing the freedom of speech and of the press. Freedom, not license, is secured; the fair use, not the libellous abuse, is protected. There has been a great difference of opinion on the question. Holmes ed. The Constitution secures the right of the people to keep and bear arms. No doubt, a citizen who keeps a gun or pistol under judicious precautions, practices in safe places the use of it, and in due time teaches his sons to do the same, exercises his individual right.

No doubt, a person whose residence or duties involve peculiar peril may keep a pistol for prudent self-defence. Aside from any necessity of self-protection to the person, it represents among all nations power coupled with the exercise of a certain jurisdiction.

Ordronaux, Constitutional Legislation in the United States — We now ask whether any of our precedents forecloses the conclusions we have reached about the meaning of the Second Amendment. The second amendment … means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.

States, we said, were free to restrict or protect the right under their police powers. The limited discussion of the Second Amendment in Cruikshank supports, if anything, the individual-rights interpretation.

Lane, The Day Freedom Died 62 That discussion makes little sense if it is only a right to bear arms in a state militia. Presser v. This does not refute the individual-rights interpretation of the Amendment; no one supporting that interpretation has contended that States may not ban such groups. And what is, according to Justice Stevens, the holding of Miller that demands such obeisance?

Miller did not hold that and cannot possibly be read to have held that. Beyond that, the opinion provided no explanation of the content of the right. Had the Court believed that the Second Amendment protects only those serving in the militia, it would have been odd to examine the character of the weapon rather than simply note that the two crooks were not militiamen. Miller stands only for the proposition that the Second Amendment right, whatever its nature, extends only to certain types of weapons.

It is particularly wrongheaded to read Miller for more than what it said, because the case did not even purport to be a thorough examination of the Second Amendment. Miller , 3 N. It then went on to rely primarily on the discussion of the English right to bear arms in Aymette v.

See Brief for United States, O. It assumes from the prologue that the Amendment was designed to preserve the militia, U. Not a word not a word about the history of the Second Amendment.

This is the mighty rock upon which the dissent rests its case. We may as well consider at this point for we will have to consider eventually what types of weapons Miller permits. Kessler , Ore. Neumann, Swords and Blades of the American Revolution 6—15, — We therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.

That accords with the historical understanding of the scope of the right, see Part III, infra. We conclude that nothing in our precedents forecloses our adoption of the original understanding of the Second Amendment. It should be unsurprising that such a significant matter has been for so long judicially unresolved. For most of our history, the Bill of Rights was not thought applicable to the States, and the Federal Government did not significantly regulate the possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens.

Other provisions of the Bill of Rights have similarly remained unilluminated for lengthy periods. Minnesota ex rel.

Olson , U. McCollum v. Board of Ed. Even a question as basic as the scope of proscribable libel was not addressed by this Court until , nearly two centuries after the founding. See New York Times Co. Sullivan , U. Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Chase ed. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Stephen, Summary of the Criminal Law 48 ; E. See also State v. Langford , 10 N. State , 16 Ala. State , 35 Tex. Lanier , 71 N. It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.

Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

We turn finally to the law at issue here. As we have said, the law totally bans handgun possession in the home. It also requires that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering it inoperable. As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right.

The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. And some of those few have been struck down. State , the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a prohibition on carrying pistols openly even though it upheld a prohibition on carrying concealed weapons. See 1 Ga. In Andrews v.

That was so even though the statute did not restrict the carrying of long guns. Reid , 1 Ala. It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms i.

It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon.

There are many reasons that a citizen may prefer a handgun for home defense: It is easier to store in a location that is readily accessible in an emergency; it cannot easily be redirected or wrestled away by an attacker; it is easier to use for those without the upper-body strength to lift and aim a long gun; it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police.

Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.

The District argues that we should interpret this element of the statute to contain an exception for self-defense. See Brief for Petitioners 56— The nonexistence of a self-defense exception is also suggested by the D. Washington , A. Brief for Petitioners Justice Breyer has devoted most of his separate dissent to the handgun ban. He first tries to establish this by founding-era historical precedent, pointing to various restrictive laws in the colonial period.

Of the laws he cites, only one offers even marginal support for his assertion. Act of Mar. Acts p. In any case, we would not stake our interpretation of the Second Amendment upon a single law, in effect in a single city, that contradicts the overwhelming weight of other evidence regarding the right to keep and bear arms for defense of the home. The other laws Justice Breyer cites are gunpowder-storage laws that he concedes did not clearly prohibit loaded weapons, but required only that excess gunpowder be kept in a special container or on the top floor of the home.

Post , at 6—7. Nothing about those fire-safety laws undermines our analysis; they do not remotely burden the right of self-defense as much as an absolute ban on handguns.

Nor, correspondingly, does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents.

Those laws provide no support for the severe restriction in the present case. The Pennsylvania law to which Justice Breyer refers levied a fine of 5 shillings on one who fired a gun or set off fireworks in Philadelphia without first obtaining a license from the governor.

See Act of Aug. Justice Breyer cites a Rhode Island law that simply levied a 5-shilling fine on those who fired guns in streets and taverns , a law obviously inapplicable to this case. X, Acts and Laws of Mass. Bay A broader point about the laws that Justice Breyer cites: All of them punished the discharge or loading of guns with a small fine and forfeiture of the weapon or in a few cases a very brief stay in the local jail , not with significant criminal penalties.

Likewise, we do not think that a law imposing a 5-shilling fine and forfeiture of the gun would have prevented a person in the founding era from using a gun to protect himself or his family from violence, or that if he did so the law would be enforced against him. The District law, by contrast, far from imposing a minor fine, threatens citizens with a year in prison five years for a second violation for even obtaining a gun in the first place.

Justice Breyer moves on to make a broad jurisprudential point: He criticizes us for declining to establish a level of scrutiny for evaluating Second Amendment restrictions. After an exhaustive discussion of the arguments for and against gun control, Justice Breyer arrives at his interest-balanced answer: because handgun violence is a problem, because the law is limited to an urban area, and because there were somewhat similar restrictions in the founding period a false proposition that we have already discussed , the interest-balancing inquiry results in the constitutionality of the handgun ban.

The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.

Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or yes even future judges think that scope too broad. See National Socialist Party of America v.

Skokie , U. The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views.

The Second Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people—which Justice Breyer would now conduct for them anew. And whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.

Justice Breyer chides us for leaving so many applications of the right to keep and bear arms in doubt, and for not providing extensive historical justification for those regulations of the right that we describe as permissible.

See post , at 42— United States , 98 U. And there will be time enough to expound upon the historical justifications for the exceptions we have mentioned if and when those exceptions come before us.

Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, see supra, at 54—55, and n.

But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem.

That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct. There are minor exceptions to all of these prohibitions, none of which is relevant here. As Sutherland explains, the key 18th-century English case on the effect of preambles, Copeman v. Gallant , 1 P. Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory Construction, Singer ed.

Justice Stevens says that we violate the general rule that every clause in a statute must have effect. Post , at 8.

Or to put the point differently, operative provisions should be given effect as operative provisions, and prologues as prologues. Justice Stevens criticizes us for discussing the prologue last. But if a prologue can be used only to clarify an ambiguous operative provision, surely the first step must be to determine whether the operative provision is ambiguous. It might be argued, we suppose, that the prologue itself should be one of the factors that go into the determination of whether the operative provision is ambiguous—but that would cause the prologue to be used to produce ambiguity rather than just to resolve it.

See infra , at 26— See McDonald v. Smith , U. Bogus ed. But that usage was not remotely uniform. Thorpe ed. Declaration of Rights ch. And, most importantly, it was clearly not the terminology used in the Federal Constitution, given the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments. What law forbids the veriest pauper, if he can raise a sum sufficient for the purchase of it, from mounting his Gun on his Chimney Piece …? Dempsey , 31 N. See Pa.

XII, cl. See Bliss v. Commonwealth , 2 Litt. Schoultz , 25 Mo. State, 5 Yer. Huntly , 25 N. Nunn v. Justice Stevens finds support for his legislative history inference from the recorded views of one Antifederalist member of the House. Post , at 26 n. Post , at 16, n. See The Federalist No. See post , at 24, and n. There is no evidence that the drafters regarded the Mason proposal as a substitute for the Jefferson proposal. See post , at 31, and n. But it is clear from the notes that Tucker located the power of States to arm their militias in the Tenth Amendment, and that he cited the Second Amendment for the proposition that such armament could not run afoul of any power of the federal government since the amendment prohibits Congress from ordering disarmament.

Nothing in the passage implies that the Second Amendment pertains only to the carrying of arms in the organized militia. Rawle, writing before our decision in Barron ex rel.

Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore , 7 Pet. Justice Stevens suggests that this is not obvious because free blacks in Virginia had been required to muster without arms. See post , at 28, n. But that could not have been the type of law referred to in Aldridge , because that practice had stopped 30 years earlier when blacks were excluded entirely from the militia by the First Militia Act.

See Siegel, supra , at , n. Our later decisions in Presser v. Texas , U. And their erroneous reliance upon an uncontested and virtually unreasoned case cannot nullify the reliance of millions of Americans as our historical analysis has shown upon the true meaning of the right to keep and bear arms.

In any event, it should not be thought that the cases decided by these judges would necessarily have come out differently under a proper interpretation of the right.

Miller was briefly mentioned in our decision in Lewis v. The challenge was based on the contention that the prior felony conviction had been unconstitutional. No Second Amendment claim was raised or briefed by any party. See United States v. The footnote then cites several Court of Appeals cases to the same effect. It is inconceivable that we would rest our interpretation of the basic meaning of any guarantee of the Bill of Rights upon such a footnoted dictum in a case where the point was not at issue and was not argued.

We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive. Justice Breyer correctly notes that this law, like almost all laws, would pass rational-basis scrutiny. But rational-basis scrutiny is a mode of analysis we have used when evaluating laws under constitutional commands that are themselves prohibitions on irrational laws.

Oregon Dept. Obviously, the same test could not be used to evaluate the extent to which a legislature may regulate a specific, enumerated right, be it the freedom of speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy, the right to counsel, or the right to keep and bear arms.

Carolene Products Co. If all that was required to overcome the right to keep and bear arms was a rational basis, the Second Amendment would be redundant with the separate constitutional prohibitions on irrational laws, and would have no effect. McIntosh upheld the law against a claim that it violated the Equal Protection Clause by arbitrarily distinguishing between residences and businesses.

See A. That tradeoff would not bear mention if the statute did not prevent stopping intruders by firearms. Smith , 4 Dall. Many of the laws cited punished violation with fine in a similar amount; the Massachusetts gunpowder-storage law carried a somewhat larger fine of 10 shillings and forfeiture of the weapon.

But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right. Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes.

Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case.

The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

In , Congress enacted the National Firearms Act, the first major federal firearms law. Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;[ Footnote 2 ] we ourselves affirmed it in See Lewis v. United States, U. Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses.

The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons.

Even if the textual and historical arguments on both sides of the issue were evenly balanced, respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on this Court, and for the rule of law itself, see Mitchell v. Grant Co.

In this dissent I shall first explain why our decision in Miller was faithful to the text of the Second Amendment and the purposes revealed in its drafting history. I shall then comment on the postratification history of the Amendment, which makes abundantly clear that the Amendment should not be interpreted as limiting the authority of Congress to regulate the use or possession of firearms for purely civilian purposes.

The text of the Second Amendment is brief. The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three important points. The preamble thus both sets forth the object of the Amendment and informs the meaning of the remainder of its text.

Madison, 1 Cranch , That is not how this Court ordinarily reads such texts, and it is not how the preamble would have been viewed at the time the Amendment was adopted. Ante, at 4. But the class of persons protected by the First and Fourth Amendments is not so limited; for even felons and presumably irresponsible citizens as well may invoke the protections of those constitutional provisions.

The Court offers no way to harmonize its conflicting pronouncements. While the right peaceably to assemble protects the individual rights of those persons participating in the assembly, its concern is with action engaged in by members of a group, rather than any single individual.

Likewise, although the act of petitioning the Government is a right that can be exercised by individuals, it is primarily collective in nature. For if they are to be effective, petitions must involve groups of individuals acting in concert. It is true that the Fourth Amendment describes a right that need not be exercised in any collective sense. For, as we have seen, the phrase means something quite different in the Petition and Assembly Clauses of the First Amendment.

By way of contrast, the Fourth Amendment describes a right against governmental interference rather than an affirmative right to engage in protected conduct, and so refers to a right to protect a purely individual interest. District of Columbia, F. No party or amicus urged this interpretation; the Court appears to have fashioned it out of whole cloth. By weapons, we more particularly mean instruments of other kinds exclusive of fire-arms , made use of as offensive, on special occasions.

But this fundamentally fails to grasp the point. When, as in this case, there is no such qualifier, the most natural meaning is the military one; and, in the absence of any qualifier, it is all the more appropriate to look to the preamble to confirm the natural meaning of the text.

Acts ch. This reading is confirmed by the fact that the clause protects only one right, rather than two. When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated by its drafters or is encompassed within its terms.

Even if the meaning of the text were genuinely susceptible to more than one interpretation, the burden would remain on those advocating a departure from the purpose identified in the preamble and from settled law to come forward with persuasive new arguments or evidence. The textual analysis offered by respondent and embraced by the Court falls far short of sustaining that heavy burden. The proper allocation of military power in the new Nation was an issue of central concern for the Framers.

Two themes relevant to our current interpretive task ran through the debates on the original Constitution. Department of Defense, U. As George Mason argued during the debates in Virginia on the ratification of the original Constitution:.

Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has the exclusive right to arm them. This sentiment was echoed at a number of state ratification conventions; indeed, it was one of the primary objections to the original Constitution voiced by its opponents.

The Anti-Federalists were ultimately unsuccessful in persuading state ratification conventions to condition their approval of the Constitution upon the eventual inclusion of any particular amendment. But a number of States did propose to the first Federal Congress amendments reflecting a desire to ensure that the institution of the militia would remain protected under the new Government. The proposed amendments sent by the States of Virginia, North Carolina, and New York focused on the importance of preserving the state militias and reiterated the dangers posed by standing armies.

New Hampshire sent a proposal that differed significantly from the others; while also invoking the dangers of a standing army, it suggested that the Constitution should more broadly protect the use and possession of weapons, without tying such a guarantee expressly to the maintenance of the militia.

The States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts sent no relevant proposed amendments to Congress, but in each of those States a minority of the delegates advocated related amendments. While the Maryland minority proposals were exclusively concerned with standing armies and conscientious objectors, the unsuccessful proposals in both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania would have protected a more broadly worded right, less clearly tied to service in a state militia. Faced with all of these options, it is telling that James Madison chose to craft the Second Amendment as he did.

The relevant proposals sent by the Virginia Ratifying Convention read as follows:. That standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power. That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted, upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead.

Cogan ed. That standing Armies, in time of Peace, are dangerous to Liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in Cases of necessity; and that at all times, the Military should be kept under strict Subordination to the civil Power.

And each proposal embedded the phrase within a group of principles that are distinctly military in meaning. Its proposal read:. The proposals considered in the other three States, although ultimately rejected by their respective ratification conventions, are also relevant to our historical inquiry.

First, the Maryland proposal, endorsed by a minority of the delegates and later circulated in pamphlet form, read:. That no standing army shall be kept up in time of peace, unless with the consent of two thirds of the members present of each branch of Congress. That no person conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms in any case, shall be compelled personally to serve as a soldier.

This motion, however, failed to achieve the necessary support, and the proposal was excluded from the list of amendments the State sent to Congress. Madison, charged with the task of assembling the proposals for amendments sent by the ratifying States, was the principal draftsman of the Second Amendment.

In addition, Madison had been a member, some years earlier, of the committee tasked with drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights. But the committee rejected that language, adopting instead the provision drafted by George Mason. When Madison prepared his first draft, and when that draft was debated and modified, it is reasonable to assume that all participants in the drafting process were fully aware of the other formulations that would have protected civilian use and possession of weapons and that their choice to craft the Amendment as they did represented a rejection of those alternative formulations.

It confirms an intent to describe a duty as well as a right, and it unequivocally identifies the military character of both. The objections voiced to the conscientious-objector clause only confirm the central meaning of the text. But that claim cannot be squared with the record.

But state militias could not effectively check the prospect of a federal standing army so long as Congress retained the power to disarm them, and so a guarantee against such disarmament was needed. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view. Moreover, the English text contained no preamble or other provision identifying a narrow, militia-related purpose. Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights, App.

This grant did not establish a general right of all persons, or even of all Protestants, to possess weapons. The Court may well be correct that the English Bill of Rights protected the right of some English subjects to use some arms for personal self-defense free from restrictions by the Crown but not Parliament. But that right—adopted in a different historical and political context and framed in markedly different language—tells us little about the meaning of the Second Amendment.

The excerpt from Blackstone offered by the Court, therefore, is, like Article VII itself, of limited use in interpreting the very differently worded, and differently historically situated, Second Amendment. What is important about Blackstone is the instruction he provided on reading the sort of text before us today. Blackstone described an interpretive approach that gave far more weight to preambles than the Court allows.

Thus, the proeme, or preamble, is often called in to help the construction of an act of parliament. The Court also excerpts, without any real analysis, commentary by a number of additional scholars, some near in time to the framing and others post-dating it by close to a century. Those scholars are for the most part of limited relevance in construing the guarantee of the Second Amendment: Their views are not altogether clear,[ Footnote 32 ] they tended to collapse the Second Amendment with Article VII of the English Bill of Rights, and they appear to have been unfamiliar with the drafting history of the Second Amendment.

The most significant of these commentators was Joseph Story. An excerpt from his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States—the same passage cited by the Court in Miller[ Footnote 34 ]— merits reproducing at some length:.

The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses with which they are attended and the facile means which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people.

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers, and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well-regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised that, among the American people, there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burdens, to be rid of all regulations.

How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by the clause of our national bill of rights. Story thus began by tying the significance of the Amendment directly to the paramount importance of the militia.

He then invoked the fear that drove the Framers of the Second Amendment—specifically, the threat to liberty posed by a standing army. There is not so much as a whisper in the passage above that Story believed that the right secured by the Amendment bore any relation to private use or possession of weapons for activities like hunting or personal self-defense.

In his view, the importance of the Amendment was directly related to the continuing vitality of an institution in the process of apparently becoming obsolete. The two provisions were indeed similar, in that both protected some uses of firearms. Moore, 5 Wheat. The Court suggests that by the post-Civil War period, the Second Amendment was understood to secure a right to firearm use and ownership for purely private purposes like personal self-defense.

While it is true that some of the legislative history on which the Court relies supports that contention, see ante, at 41—44, such sources are entitled to limited, if any, weight. All of the statements the Court cites were made long after the framing of the Amendment and cannot possibly supply any insight into the intent of the Framers; and all were made during pitched political debates, so that they are better characterized as advocacy than good-faith attempts at constitutional interpretation.

What is more, much of the evidence the Court offers is decidedly less clear than its discussion allows. But some of the claims of the sort the Court cites may have been just that. In some Southern States, Reconstruction-era Republican governments created state militias in which both blacks and whites were permitted to serve. Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia — The sight of organized, armed freedmen incensed opponents of Reconstruction and led to an intensified campaign of Klan terror.

Leading members of the Negro militia were beaten or lynched and their weapons stolen. One particularly chilling account of Reconstruction-era Klan violence directed at a black militia member is recounted in the memoir of Louis F. In light of this evidence, it is quite possible that at least some of the statements on which the Court relies actually did mean to refer to the disarmament of black militia members.

The statute is significant, for it confirmed the way those in the founding generation viewed firearm ownership: as a duty linked to military service. See Perpich, U. The postratification history of the Second Amendment is strikingly similar. The Amendment played little role in any legislative debate about the civilian use of firearms for most of the 19th century, and it made few appearances in the decisions of this Court.

Two 19th-century cases, however, bear mentioning. In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. Neither is it in any manner dependent on that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.

This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government. See generally C. Only one other 19th-century case in this Court, Presser v. Illinois, U. The petitioner in Presser was convicted of violating a state statute that prohibited organizations other than the Illinois National Guard from associating together as military companies or parading with arms.

Presser challenged his conviction, asserting, as relevant, that the statute violated both the Second and the Fourteenth Amendments. With respect to the Second Amendment, the Court wrote:. But a conclusive answer to the contention that this amendment prohibits the legislation in question lies in the fact that the amendment is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the National government, and not upon that of the States.

On the contrary, the fact that he did not belong to the organized militia or the troops of the United States was an ingredient in the offence for which he was convicted and sentenced.

The question is, therefore, had he a right as a citizen of the United States, in disobedience of the State law, to associate with others as a military company, and to drill and parade with arms in the towns and cities of the State?

If the plaintiff in error has any such privilege he must be able to point to the provision of the Constitution or statutes of the United States by which it is conferred. But since the statutes did not infringe upon the military use or possession of weapons, for most legislators they did not even raise the specter of possible conflict with the Second Amendment. Thus, for most of our history, the invalidity of Second-Amendment-based objections to firearms regulations has been well settled and uncontroversial.

Yet enforcement of that law produced the judicial decision that confirmed the status of the Amendment as limited in reach to military usage. The key to that decision did not, as the Court belatedly suggests, ante, at 49—51, turn on the difference between muskets and sawed-off shotguns; it turned, rather, on the basic difference between the military and nonmilitary use and possession of guns. After the ruling, Paul Helmke stated that, “the classic ‘slippery slope’ argument”, “that even modest gun control would lead down the path to a complete ban on gun ownership”, “is now gone.

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe contended that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, and predicted that if Parker is reviewed by the Supreme Court “there’s a really quite decent chance that it will be affirmed. Erwin Chemerinsky , then of Duke Law School and now dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law , argued that the District of Columbia’s handgun laws, even assuming an “individual rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment, could be justified as reasonable regulations and thus upheld as constitutional.

Professor Chemerinsky believes that the regulation of guns should be analyzed in the same way “as other regulation of property under modern constitutional law” and “be allowed so long as it is rationally related to achieving a legitimate government purpose. Cato Institute senior fellow Robert Levy, co-counsel to the Parker plaintiffs, agreed with the court’s ruling but describes that his interpretation of the Second Amendment would not preclude all governmental regulation of private ownership of weapons:.

Even the NRA concedes that you can’t have mad men running around with weapons of mass destruction. So there are some restrictions that are permissible and it will be the task of the legislature and the courts to ferret all of that out and draw the lines.

I am sure, though, that outright bans on handguns like they have in D. That is not a reasonable restriction under anybody’s characterization. It is not a restriction, it’s a prohibition. America went over years without knowing whether a key provision of the Bill of Rights actually meant anything. We came within one vote of being told that it did not, notwithstanding what amounts to a national consensus that the Second Amendment means what it says: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Taking rights seriously, including rights we might not favor personally, is good medicine for the body politic, and Heller was an excellent dose. Wade , stating that it created a federal constitutional right that did not previously exist, and he asserts that the originalist method — to which Justice Antonin Scalia claimed to adhere — would have yielded the opposite result of the majority opinion. The text of the amendment, whether viewed alone or in light of the concerns that actuated its adoption, creates no right to the private possession of guns for hunting or other sport, or for the defense of person or property.

It is doubtful that the amendment could even be thought to require that members of state militias be allowed to keep weapons in their homes, since that would reduce the militias’ effectiveness. Suppose part of a state’s militia was engaged in combat and needed additional weaponry. Would the militia’s commander have to collect the weapons from the homes of militiamen who had not been mobilized, as opposed to obtaining them from a storage facility?

Since the purpose of the Second Amendment, judging from its language and background, was to assure the effectiveness of state militias, an interpretation that undermined their effectiveness by preventing states from making efficient arrangements for the storage and distribution of military weapons would not make sense.

Harvie Wilkinson III , chief judge of United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit , consents to Posner’s analysis, stating that Heller “encourages Americans to do what conservative jurists warned for years they should not do: bypass the ballot and seek to press their political agenda in the courts.

Heller thus represents the worst of missed opportunities—the chance to ground conservative jurisprudence in enduring and consistent principles of restraint. The Constitution expresses the need for judicial restraint in many different ways—separation of powers, federalism, and the grant of life tenure to unelected judges among them. It is an irony that Heller would in the name of originalism abandon insights so central to the Framers’ designs. Alan Gura , Lead Counsel for Respondent in Heller rejects Wilkinson’s criticism, stating that “Rather, the Court affirmed the Second Amendment’s original public meaning, as confirmed by its plain text.

Having determined the Amendment’s meaning, the Court showed the proper level of deference to the D. City Council’s outright repudiation of the constitutional text: none. Since the June ruling, over 80 different cases have been heard in lower federal courts on the constitutionality of a wide variety of gun control laws.

In addition, courts have heard challenges to laws barring guns in post offices and near schools and laws outlawing “straw” purchases, carrying of concealed weapons, types of ammunition and possession of unregistered firearms. In most cases the gun safety law or criminal conviction at issue has been however upheld by the lower courts. The courts have upheld most of the above-mentioned laws as being constitutional. Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of arms.

Consistently since the Heller ruling, the lower federal courts have ruled that almost all gun control measures as presently legislated are lawful and that according to UCLA professor of constitutional law Adam Winkler: “What gun rights advocates are discovering is that the vast majority of gun control laws fit within these categories. Robert Levy, the executive director of the Cato Institute who funded the Heller litigation has commented on this passage describing constitutionally acceptable forms of prohibitions of firearms: “I would have preferred that that not have been there,” and that this paragraph in Scalia’s opinion “created more confusion than light.

Similar to the lifting of gun bans mentioned previously in the settlements of lawsuits filed post- Heller , in US v. Arzberger , also decided post- Heller , it was noted:. To the extent, then, that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess a firearm unrelated to any military purpose, it also establishes a protectible liberty interest. And, although the Supreme Court has indicated that this privilege may be withdrawn from some groups of persons such as convicted felons, there is no basis for categorically depriving persons who are merely accused of certain crimes of the right to legal possession of a firearm.

The D. The new provisions were: 1 the firearms registration procedures; 2 the prohibition on assault weapons; and 3 the prohibition on large capacity ammunition feeding devices. In response, Dick Heller challenged these new restrictions filing a civil suit named Heller v. District of Columbia Civil Action No.

On March 26, , the D. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina denied Dick Heller’s request and granted the cross motion, stating that the court “concludes that the regulatory provisions that the plaintiffs challenge permissibly regulate the exercise of the core Second Amendment right to use arms for the purpose of self-defense in the home.

Dick Heller’s application to register his semi-automatic pistol was rejected because the gun was a bottom-loading weapon, and according to the District’s interpretation, all bottom-loading guns, including magazine-fed non-assault-style rifles, are outlawed because they are grouped with machine guns. On December 16, , the D. Council unanimously passed the Firearms Registration Emergency Amendment Act of [83] which addresses the issues raised in the Heller Supreme Court decision, and also puts in place a number of registration requirements to update and strengthen the District’s gun laws.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the majority provided Second Amendment protection for commonly used and popular handguns but not for atypical arms or arms used for unlawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns. Scalia stated: “Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.

But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. On July 24, , the U. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled, in Palmer v.

District of Columbia , that the District’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns is unconstitutional. Accordingly, the Court grants Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and enjoins Defendants from enforcing the home limitations of D. Furthermore, this injunction prohibits the District from completely banning the carrying of handguns in public for self-defense by otherwise qualified non-residents based solely on the fact that they are not residents of the District.

Southern District of New York Magistrate Judge James Francis has said that, prior to Heller , it would not have been considered unreasonable to require a defendant to surrender a firearm as a condition of pretrial release. Specifically, according to Judge Francis: [92]. This all changed, with the recent U. Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v.

Heller ; S. Thus, in the absence of an individualized determination at a bail hearing, requiring the defendant to give up any firearms violates due process. Maloney v. Rice a. Cuomo and Maloney v. Spitzer , F. The case involved a state ban on Nunchaku sticks a martial arts weapon in New York. In a memorandum opinion dated June 29, , the Supreme Court vacated the Second Circuit decision in Maloney and remanded for further consideration in light of the holding in McDonald v.

City of Chicago that the Second Amendment does apply to the states. The Second Circuit has remanded the case to the trial court. The NRA has filed five related lawsuits since the Heller decision. The fourth NRA lawsuit against Chicago was rejected. On June 2, , the Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision, based on the theory that Heller applied only to the Federal Government including the District of Columbia , and not to states or their subordinate jurisdictions.

City of Chicago and remanded it back to Seventh Circuit to resolve conflicts between certain Chicago gun restrictions and the Second Amendment. Chicago’s handgun law was likened to the D. Similarly, three Illinois municipalities with gun control measures on the books that previously had banned all handguns have rescinded their handgun bans. In Ezell v. Chicago , [] decided July 6, , the Seventh Circuit reversed a district court decision that the post- McDonald measures adopted by the City of Chicago were constitutional.

The Chicago law required firearms training in a shooting range in order to obtain a gun permit, but also banned shooting ranges within the City of Chicago. The city had argued that applicants could obtain their training at gun ranges in the suburbs. The opinion noted that Chicago could not infringe Second Amendment rights on the grounds that they could be exercised elsewhere, any more than it could infringe the right to freedom of speech on the grounds that citizens could speak elsewhere.

On January 14, , in Guy Montag Doe v. The San Francisco lawsuit resulted in the elimination of the gun ban from the SF Housing Authority residential lease terms. Tim Larsen speaking for the Housing Authority said that they never intended to enforce its housing lease gun ban against law-abiding gun owners and have never done so. On January 10, , in Morris v. Army Corps of Engineers , the District Court struck down a Corps of Engineers regulation barring possession of loaded guns in recreation areas surrounding Corps dams.

The court held that tents are akin to homes, and under Heller , Second Amendment rights are protected. The decision in McDonald v.

City of Chicago , which was brought in response to Heller and decided in , did invalidate much of Chicago’s gun purchase and registration laws, and has called into question many other state and local laws restricting purchase, possession, and carry of firearms. Justice Stevens later called the decision “unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench” and called for a Constitutional amendment overruling it”.

Stephen Halbrook , a lawyer and Second Amendment analyst who successfully argued three firearms-related cases before the Supreme Court, concluded the majority’s opinion in Heller “relied on text, history, and tradition. This included the English Declaration of Rights of , as well as “post-ratification commentary, antebellum judicial opinions, Reconstruction legislation, and post-Civil War commentary.

The Court’s statement that the right secured by the Second Amendment is limited has been widely discussed by lower courts and the media. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the sportswriter, see Dick Heller sportswriter. Supreme Court of the United States. Weekly Fed. S The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.

Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. January Learn how and when to remove this template message. See also: McDonald v. City of Chicago , Guy Montag Doe v. San Francisco Housing Authority , and Nordyke v. Ban On Handgun Ownership”.

The Washington Post. Retrieved February 19, The Supreme Court Heller did not address the question of whether the Second Amendment extends beyond the federal government and federal enclaves such as District of Columbia. The New York Times. Cato Institute. Event occurs at Retrieved October 27, The District responds that, notwithstanding the broad language of the Code, a judge would likely give the statute a narrowing construction when confronted with a self-defense justification.

That might be so, but judicial lenity cannot make up for the unreasonable restriction of a constitutional right. Heller S. The National Law Journal. Archived from the original on March 15, Retrieved March 11, Retrieved February 26, March 18, Archived from the original on March 10, Retrieved March 18, Archived from the original on April 14, Retrieved February 27, Archived from the original on September 18, Retrieved February 22, Department of Justice brief” PDF.

Archived from the original PDF on May 31, United States Supreme Court. Archived from the original PDF on May 28, Retrieved March 5, Archived from the original on January 1, Retrieved March 19, Washington Times. Retrieved January 10, February 19, Archived from the original on January 22, Retrieved February 20, Illinois Supreme Court. September 12, Archived from the original PDF on June 11, Retrieved September 14, Retrieved June 27, Gun Case Reaches High Court”.

Legal Times. Archived from the original on December 7, Retrieved October 29, ABA Journal. Retrieved October 31, Gun Ban’s Fate? DC Examiner. Harvard Law Bulletin. Archived from the original on December 18, Retrieved November 1, National Review Online. Archived from the original on April 12, CBS News.

June 27, Archived from the original on September 29, Associated Press. Archived from the original on June 9, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Archived from the original on November 28, Archived from the original on October 29, March 4, The Wall Street Journal. Mother Jones. August 27, The New Republic. Archived from the original on October 28, Retrieved October 22, Huffington Post. Retrieved February 1, Retrieved December 18, Giffords Law Center. May 31, Archived from the original on October 4, Retrieved January 13, August 25, Archived from the original on October 27, Archived from the original PDF on December 4, Heller “.

Retrieved August 30, The Volokh Conspiracy. Archived from the original PDF on March 31, Retrieved March 31, Archived from the original on March 31, July 17, Archived from the original on July 18, Retrieved July 17, Dick Heller is the man who brought the lawsuit against the District’s year-old ban on handguns.

He was among the first in line Thursday morning to apply for a handgun permit. But when he tried to register his semi-automatic weapon, he says he was rejected. Fox News. Retrieved July 7, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department.

 
 

 

District of columbia et al. v. heller. District of Columbia v. Heller

 
v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., U. S. , SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. Syllabus. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. ET AL. v. HELLER. CERTIORARI TO THE . Heller sued the District of Columbia. He sought an injunction against the enforcement of the relevant parts of the Code and argued that they violated his Second Amendment right to keep . Jun 26,  · SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia .

 
 

District of Columbia v. Heller – Wikipedia

 
 
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Respondent Heller, a D. C. special policeman, applied to regis-. U.S. Reports: District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, U.S. (). Contributor Names. Scalia, Antonin (Judge); Supreme Court of the United. District of Columbia v. Heller, U.S. , was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s right to keep and bear.