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 those

guns 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 not

unlimited 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.