The Right To Keep and Bear Arms: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER

The Washington DC handgun ban was repealed by the US Supreme Court on June 26, 2008. Here is the ruling: (local) Supreme Court Ruling on the Washington DC handgun ban

Short Form: DC made laws making it impossible for anyone to keep or bear (own or carry…) a handgun in the city. And everyone knows how effective that has been (IE “murder capital of the United States”). A police officer wanted to keep a gun in his home so he sued for the right. He won in a 5-4 split decision in the Supreme Court.

For all you Second Amendment nay-sayers, the very first statement made on page 1 is this:

Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

There is a good bit of discussion and clarification about the wording of the Second Amendment starting at the end of page 2. If there are any questions about it, I recomend you read it.

Some excerpts (this is non-inclusive, I recommend you read the whole thing)

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous,
that only those arms in existence in the 18th century
are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret
constitutional rights that way.

.

In numerous instances,
“bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to
the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.

.

The phrase “bear Arms” also had at the time of the
founding an idiomatic meaning that was significantly
different from its natural meaning: “to serve as a soldier,

After this decision, there have been a flurry of lawsuits. One of which is in San Francisco. Take a look.

Leave a Comment

Do not write "http://" or "https://" in your comment, it will be blocked. It may take a few days for me to manually approve your first comment.