Court opinion · 2008

District of Columbia v. Heller

In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use it for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home. The Court struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handgun possession in the home and its requirement that other lawful firearms be kept disassembled or trigger-locked, while stating that the right is not unlimited and that longstanding prohibitions, such as those on possession by felons, were not cast into doubt.

“As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose.”

Justice Antonin Scalia (majority opinion), June 26, 2008

Why it matters

The Court’s first full examination of the Second Amendment’s meaning in nearly seven decades, it remains the foundation of modern Second Amendment law; dissenting Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer argued that the amendment protects a militia-related right and that the District’s law was a permissible regulation.

Read the full text at law.cornell.edu

Primary Source

The original record, reproduced or linked from the institution that holds it. Primary sources show what people said and did in their own words.

Subjects

second amendment supreme court self-defense constitution

From the library

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