District of Columbia v. Heller: Second Amendment Case Brief

Case Facts and Background

The District of Columbia Code prohibited carrying an unregistered firearm and banned the registration of handguns through its provisions. However, the Code also granted the chief of police the authority to issue one-year licenses for handguns. Additionally, the Code required individuals owning legitimately registered firearms to keep them unloaded and disassembled, or secured with a trigger lock, unless the firearms were kept in business places or being used for legalized recreational activities.

Dick Anthony Heller, a special police officer in Washington, D.C., was permitted to carry a handgun while on duty. He applied for a one-year registration license from the city of Washington for a handgun he wished to keep at home. His application was rejected under the provisions of the District of Columbia Code. Heller subsequently sued the District of Columbia, arguing that the Code's provisions violated the Second Amendment. Specifically, he contended that the Amendment granted individuals the right to bear arms, and that the handgun registration requirement, the prohibition on unregistered handguns in the home, and the trigger-lock requirement for legally owned firearms all violated that right.

The district court dismissed the lawsuit, but the District of Columbia Circuit reversed that decision, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently granted certiorari (U.S. Supreme Court, 2007).

Legal Issue and Rule of Law

The central issue in this case is whether the provisions of the District of Columbia Code violate the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. More specifically, the question is: do the provisions of the District of Columbia Code violate the Second Amendment by restricting handgun licensure and requiring trigger locks for firearms kept in the home?

The applicable rule of law is that the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to bear arms, and protects against the infringement of that right on the basis that a well-regulated militia is essential to the security of a free state.

Supreme Court Ruling and Conclusion

In a 5–4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the federal appeals court and struck down two provisions of the District of Columbia Code as unconstitutional. According to the majority opinion, the trigger-lock requirement for handguns kept in the home was unconstitutional because it would make it impossible for citizens to use their firearms even for the legitimate purpose of self-defense. The Court also found that the handgun ban amounted to a prohibition on an entire class of firearms that citizens commonly choose for lawful self-defense. This prohibition therefore failed to meet the standards previously applied by the Supreme Court to enumerated constitutional rights (Rose, 2008).

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court did not address the issue of the licensing requirement for handguns as set forth in the District of Columbia Code, because Heller had indicated he would find such a requirement acceptable so long as it was not implemented in an arbitrary or capricious manner. Accordingly, the Court ruled that the District was required to permit Heller to register his firearm and to issue him a license to keep it in his home, provided he was not otherwise disqualified from exercising rights protected by the Second Amendment.

Majority and Dissenting Opinions Analyzed

The majority opinion was authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, who argued that interpretation of the Second Amendment is guided by the principle that the U.S. Constitution was drafted and enacted to be understood by ordinary voters. The Constitution was therefore written in plain, ordinary language rather than in technical legal terms. On this basis, Justice Scalia divided the Second Amendment into two parts: the prefatory clause and the operative clause. He argued that the term "militia" in the first segment of the Amendment functions as a prefatory clause that does not limit the operative clause. Furthermore, "militia" should not be understood as referring only to individuals serving in an organized military force, since it historically referred to all able-bodied men capable of being called into military service. Restricting the right to bear arms to members of a government-controlled military would, in Scalia's view, promote exactly the kind of state-sponsored force that the Second Amendment was designed to prevent. At the time of the Amendment's drafting, the operative clause meant that every individual was granted the right to keep and carry arms in case of confrontation — and therefore prohibiting handguns as an entire class of arms used for self-defense, or prohibiting the keeping of functional firearms in the home, infringes on the Second Amendment.

To reach this conclusion, the majority conducted a comprehensive review of the text and historical record of the Second Amendment. Based on their findings, the majority argued that the individual-right interpretation of this constitutional provision is supported by the historical record surrounding the Amendment's drafting and by courts, legislators, and scholars throughout the late nineteenth century (Rose, 2008).

The majority decision also rested on a rejection of the reasoning in United States v. Miller (1939), which held that the Second Amendment does not limit the legislature's power to regulate the ownership and nonmilitary use of firearms. The majority argued that the Miller decision is actually consistent with the interpretation that the Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Although Miller stated that the Amendment does not prevent the legislature from curtailing civilian ownership and nonmilitary use of weapons, that case did not constitute an extensive examination of the Amendment's scope. Using Miller as a controlling precedent in Second Amendment cases was therefore not only erroneous but also based on an incomplete analysis of the Amendment.

The dissenting justices, led by Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Stephen Breyer, argued that the majority's decision rested on an unconvincing and strained reading of the Second Amendment. Their arguments drew substantially from the Miller ruling's position that the Amendment does not restrict the legislature's authority to regulate civilian ownership and use of firearms. Justice Stevens contended that Miller had long served as a well-established precedent and reflected the natural interpretation of the Amendment, because the Framers of the Constitution did not intend to enshrine a common-law right of individual self-defense in the constitutional text (U.S. Supreme Court, 2007). Justice Breyer advocated for an explicit interest-balancing approach to interpreting the Second Amendment. Both dissenting arguments were rejected by Justice Scalia, who maintained an individual-right interpretation and rejected the interest-balancing framework as incompatible with the Amendment's text and history.

References

Kopel, D. (2016, February 4). Kolbe v. Hogan: 4th Circuit requires strict scrutiny for Maryland ban on magazines and semiautomatics. The Washington Post.

Rose, V. (2008, October 17). Summary of D.C. v. Heller. Connecticut General Assembly. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0578.htm

U.S. Supreme Court. (2007, October). District of Columbia et al. v. Heller.