U.S. Supreme Court Cases - Past Precedents
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875). In the first case to deal with the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment does not bar state regulation of firearms. The Court stated that the Second Amendment “has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.” While the Cruikshank ruling primarily functioned as a way to disarm African American residents while protecting white Southern paramilitary groups and only addresses the Second Amendment in passing, it remains frequently cited when answering questions on the function and scope of the Second Amendment.
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United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). In perhaps the most cited Supreme Court case on the Second Amendment, the Court held that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of” the state militia, and the Amendment “must be interpreted and applied with the end in view.” Essentially, the focus of the Second Amendment was to protect the rights of states to form militias, not the rights of individuals to own guns, and that the protections of the Second Amendment must be understood within the context of militia service. However, the Supreme Court hinted that an individual right may exist in the context of a “common obligation … to possess arm … and to cooperate in the work of defense” and that a sawed-off shotgun, the firearm at issue in the case, was unprotected because it had no “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.” This implied that all “free men” could possess weapons of the type used for militia service, but the Court halted this argument by insisting that only thoseguns usable in militia service and held for the purpose of militia service were protected by the Second Amendment.
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District of Columbia v. Heller, 552 U.S. 1229 (2008). In a 5-4 ruling, the Court held that the
Second Amendment confers an individual right to possess firearms unrelated to service in a well-regulated state militia, marking the first time that Supreme Court gave a definite answer on whether the Second Amendment provides an individual right to own and bear arms. In response to Washington, D.C.’s ban on all handguns from the city and requirement that all other guns be kept in homes unload and disassembled or trigger-locked, the Court stated that blanket prohibitions on entire categories of guns that could be used for lawful purposes and restrictions that essentially prevented the use of a gun for lawful purposes were not constitutional. However, the Court emphasized that the individual right to bear arms was notunlimited and certain forms of federal regulation remain permissible, including prohibiting the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, the possession of firearms in sensitive places such as school and government buildings, and the imposition of conditions on the commercial sale of firearms. Notably, the Court’s holding only applied to Washington, D.C., rather than nationally.
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McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). Shortly after the Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to keep and bear arms extends to individuals in each of the 50 U.S. states.
The Court ruled that the Second Amendment was incorporated by the due process section of the Fourteenth Amendment and individuals were therefore granted a constitutional right to keep firearms in their homes for self-protection. This right, the Court stated, was greater than the states’ power to restrict it. Similar to its holding in Heller, the Supreme Court held that state and federal laws prohibiting possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill and the possession of firearms inside public schools were constitutional.