Citation

Spitzer R. Law Contemp. Probl. 2017; 80(2): 55-83.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Duke University, School of Law)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In its important and controversial 2008 decision on the meaning of the Second Amendment, District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled that average citizens have a constitutional right to possess handguns for personal self-protection in the home. Yet in establishing this right, the Court also made clear that the right was by no means unlimited, and that it was subject to an array of legal restrictions, including: "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." The Court also said that certain types of especially powerful weapons might be subject to regulation, along with allowing laws regarding the safe storage of firearms. Further,the Court referred repeatedly to gun laws that had existed earlier in American history as a justification for allowing similar contemporary laws, even though the court, by its own admission, did not undertake its own "exhaustive historical analysis" of past laws...

Available: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol80/iss2/3

Language: en