Photo by Samer Farha

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.

If the decision was monumental and momentous, the year in between has been anything but. While city officials originally warned that any such ruling would provoke a sudden surge in gun violence, they quickly came to terms with the legal reality and began what has been a slow and somewhat obtuse process of crafting regulations that allow District residents to own handguns — after jumping through a number of hoops, of course.

In the meantime, Heller and other residents have filed additional lawsuits against the District, arguing that city officials have continued to flout the spirit of the ruling by throwing obstacles between guns and their hopeful owners. Gun registrations haven’t exactly overwhelmed the police, indicating that either District residents aren’t too keen on owning guns, or are stymied by the registration process and lack of local gun-shopping options. (The zoning debate process over where potential gun shops could go took place earlier this year.)