Results tagged “heller”

It was on this day last year that the District's longstanding and long controversial ban on handguns was upended, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such blanket prohibitions were an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment. More broadly, though, what had been the country's strictest regulations of a specific type of gun gave the majority of the court the chance to rule that the Second Amendment granted an individual, not collective right to gun ownership. And it was all because of a District resident whose name now graces the case file: Dick Heller.

Remember how last summer's Supreme Court ruling on the District's handgun ban promised to upend regulations and restrictions on gun ownership across the country? It doesn't seem to be happening. The New York Times reported yesterday that of 80 cases that have come before lower federal courts in Heller's wake, few have actually resulted in the overturning of federal laws limiting gun ownership, transport and use. (The article cites the case of an East St. Louis, Ill. man who tried to argue that the Second Amendment protected his right to carry a gun while selling drugs. Predictably, a court disagreed.) Of course, state and local laws have yet to be tested, but some scholars guess that not much will come from those challenges either. It remains to be seen how pending lawsuits against the District's new regulations stand up to post-Heller scrutiny (not to mention a meddling Congress).

One relatively early vote from yesterday's marathon final D.C. Council legislative session of the year was the approval of a number of changes to the District's ever-evolving gun laws. (Quick aside: Must the Council always pull out these last-minute legislate-a-thons? They often make for bad laws, not to mention force local scribes to try to fit far too many votes into far too few words. And now back to our regularly scheduled post.)