In District of Columbia v. Heller, decided June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep a firearm at home for self-defense, independent of any service in a militia.1Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. District of Columbia v. Heller The Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and its requirement that all lawful firearms in the home be kept unloaded and either disassembled or trigger-locked. It was the first time the Court squarely held that the Second Amendment belongs to individual citizens rather than to states arming their militias.
The D.C. Law at Issue
Washington, D.C. had one of the strictest firearms regimes in the country. Under the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, carrying an unregistered firearm was a crime, and the District would not register handguns. Only handguns registered before 1975 could be kept, and no new registrations were allowed. The practical effect was a near-total ban on private handgun possession.
The law reached beyond handguns. Rifles and shotguns that residents could lawfully own had to be kept unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times inside the home.1Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. District of Columbia v. Heller A resident could not lawfully render any firearm operable for immediate use, even in an emergency.
How the Case Got to the Supreme Court
Dick Heller was a licensed special police officer who carried a handgun on duty at the Federal Judicial Center. When he applied to register a handgun for personal protection at home, the District refused.2Justia. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570 He and five other plaintiffs sued in federal district court. The district court dismissed the case, reading the Second Amendment as protecting only militia-related rights. In 2007, the D.C. Circuit reversed 2-1, holding that the amendment protects an individual right. The Supreme Court took the case and issued its ruling the following June.1Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. District of Columbia v. Heller
What the Court Decided
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion. The Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, and that self-defense in the home is the central component of that right.2Justia. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570
The opinion split the amendment into two parts. The militia language was a “prefatory clause” announcing a purpose. The right “of the people to keep and bear Arms” was the “operative clause,” and it stood on its own.1Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. District of Columbia v. Heller Scalia read founding-era sources to conclude that “militia” then meant all able-bodied men expected to bring their own privately owned arms when called to serve, which meant the right to keep those arms preceded and existed independently of militia duty.
Applied to D.C., the handgun ban failed because it prohibited an entire class of arms Americans overwhelmingly choose for self-defense. The trigger-lock and disassembly requirement failed on its own terms because it made every lawful firearm inoperable at the moment a resident might need it. Both provisions were struck down.
What the Ruling Did Not Do
The majority was explicit that the individual right it recognized is not unlimited. Scalia wrote:
“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.”3Library of Congress. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570
The Court described these as “presumptively lawful” measures, and for years lower courts treated the list as a safe harbor.4Cornell Law School. Post-Heller Issues and Application of Second Amendment to States Background checks, age restrictions, prohibitions on gun sales to people with certain criminal records, and bans on carrying in courthouses continued under Heller without difficulty.
The Court also said the amendment’s protection extends only to weapons “in common use” for lawful purposes, leaving room for restrictions on unusual or highly dangerous arms, including short-barreled shotguns and fully automatic firearms.2Justia. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570
The Dissents
Four justices dissented in two separate opinions. Justice John Paul Stevens argued the amendment was adopted to keep Congress from disarming state militias, not to guarantee a personal right of self-defense. He pointed to drafting history showing that James Madison considered and rejected language that would have clearly protected civilian uses like hunting or personal protection, and to state constitutions of the same era that did expressly protect those uses. The federal amendment’s silence, in his view, was meaningful. He also argued the majority departed from United States v. Miller (1939), which had tied Second Amendment protection to militia service.5Law.Cornell.Edu. District of Columbia v. Heller – Stevens, J., Dissenting
Justice Stephen Breyer took a different route. Even assuming the amendment protects some individual right, he said, courts should ask whether a gun regulation burdens that right out of proportion to its public-safety benefits. Under that “interest-balancing” test, he would have upheld D.C.’s law as a reasonable legislative judgment about how to reduce firearms deaths.6Cornell Law School. District of Columbia v. Heller – Breyer, J., Dissenting The majority rejected that approach outright, saying constitutional rights are not subject to judicial cost-benefit analysis.
What Heller Left Open
Heller answered the individual-right question but left two large ones for later. First, did the ruling apply to state and local governments, or only to federal enclaves like D.C.? Second, what test should courts use when weighing a specific gun regulation against the right? Both questions produced their own Supreme Court cases.
McDonald v. Chicago (2010)
Chicago and Oak Park had handgun bans similar to D.C.’s. Otis McDonald, a retired maintenance engineer in a high-crime neighborhood, joined a challenge to them. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause makes the Heller right applicable to state and local governments.7LII / Legal Information Institute. McDonald v. Chicago After McDonald, every city and state is bound by the same rule as D.C.
NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022)
For over a decade after Heller, most federal courts evaluated gun laws with a two-step test that often ended in the kind of interest-balancing the Heller majority had rejected. In practice, most regulations survived. The Supreme Court threw out that framework in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for a 6-3 majority that struck down New York’s requirement that concealed-carry applicants show a special need for self-defense.8Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen
Bruen set the current test. When a gun regulation restricts conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text, the government must show the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation, generally by pointing to analogues from the founding era through Reconstruction.8Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen Means-end scrutiny is out. History is in.
United States v. Rahimi (2024)
The first major test of the historical framework came in United States v. Rahimi, which asked whether the federal ban on firearm possession by someone under a domestic violence restraining order survives Bruen. The Fifth Circuit had said no. The Supreme Court reversed 8-1 in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, holding that a person a court has found to pose a credible physical threat may be temporarily disarmed. The Court analogized the statute to founding-era surety laws and “going armed” laws.9Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi
Rahimi softened Bruen’s edges. The government does not need a “historical twin” for every modern law; a “historical analogue” imposing a comparable burden for a comparable reason is enough.9Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi Justice Thomas, the author of Bruen, was the only dissenter.
Where the Law Stands Now
Heller established the individual right. McDonald applied it to the states. Bruen set the test courts use to evaluate gun regulations. Rahimi clarified how flexibly that test operates. Together, they govern every Second Amendment challenge filed today.
The practical bottom line: outright handgun bans and rules requiring firearms to be kept inoperable in the home are almost certainly unconstitutional. Background checks, felon-in-possession laws, restrictions in sensitive places, and regulation of commercial gun sales remain permissible under Heller’s own carveouts. The contested ground lies in between: age limits, magazine-capacity caps, assault-weapon bans, and public-carry rules. Those cases turn on how persuasively a government can connect its modern law to a historical tradition of firearms regulation, and different courts are still reaching different answers.