Supreme Court.īy a 5-4 margin and reflecting a conservative-liberal breakdown, the Court affirmed the appellate court's ruling. The appellate court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms and that D.C.'s handgun ban, along with the requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional, violated that right. Special Police Officer whose application for handgun registration was denied by the city. Though the appellate court dismissed five of the residents from the lawsuit for technical reasons, it reversed the trial court's decision with respect to Dick Anthony Heller, a D.C. The federal trial court ruled in favor of D.C., holding that “the Second Amendment does not bestow any rights on individuals except, perhaps, when an individual serves in an organized Militia, such as today's National Guard.” 7 The residents appealed. residents who wished to keep handguns for self-defense purposes challenged the Act as violating the Second Amendment. 6 Taken together, these restrictions were viewed by many as the toughest in the nation. The law also required firearms kept in the home to be unloaded and disassembled or secured with a trigger lock. Because of handguns' connection to both risks, the law specifically banned ownership of handguns, including sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and pistols, 5 and required that lawful firearms (e.g., shotguns and rifles) be registered with the city. passed the Firearms Control Regulation Act (“the Act”), which, in response to increasing gun violence and accidental deaths, limited firearm use and possession. In Heller, the Court addressed this division directly, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess and use a gun for reasons unrelated to militia service. Miller, 4 upholding a provision of the National Firearms Act requiring registration of sawed-off shotguns without fully addressing the individual/collective right distinction. Only a few times has the Court interpreted the Second Amendment its most recent occasion was in 1939 in U.S. Indeed, there is scant Supreme Court jurisprudence concerning the Amendment generally. Supreme Court had never directly ruled on which interpretation of the Second Amendment was correct. Heller, 3 which considered the constitutionality of a District of Columbia (D.C.) law banning the possession of handguns, the U.S. Prior to its June 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. 2 Because the constitutionality of many gun regulations turns on this distinction, the public health policy implications of adopting one interpretation over the other are enormous. One side of the argument maintains that the language of the Amendment confers an individual right to possess firearms for private use the other side claims that possession and use of guns can only be tied to a collective right-namely, the right to preserve and arm state militias. The Second Amendment-“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” 1-has long been the subject of intense debate. This installment of Law and the Public's Health concerns one of the most hotly contested constitutional issues underpinning public health policy and practice: the meaning and reach of the Second Amendment of the U.S.
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