District of Columbia v. Heller

Dick Heller guards the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. with a handgun on his hip. When his shift ends, the law requires him to leave the gun behind: since 1975, the District has banned handgun possession at home and required any long gun to be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger-locked. Heller applies for a registration certificate to keep a handgun in his house and is refused. He sues, arguing the Second Amendment protects his right to keep a working firearm for self-defense. For over two centuries, the Supreme Court has never squarely decided what the Amendment's twenty-seven words actually protect.

The District argues that the Amendment's opening clause, "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," defines its purpose: it protects state militias from federal disarmament, not private gun ownership, and a dense city facing gun violence can regulate accordingly. Heller argues that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" means individual people, as it does everywhere else in the Bill of Rights, and that self-defense in one's own home is the core of the right, whatever the preamble says about militias.

If the District wins, gun regulation remains a policy question for legislatures, and the Second Amendment stays dormant as a practical limit. If Heller wins, an individual right exists that courts must define for decades: which weapons, which places, which people, which regulations survive. The 5-4 decision for Heller opened exactly that battle, and American courts are still fighting it case by case.