The Second Amendment reads: “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.” For most of American history, the Supreme Court said little about what that sentence protects. Since 2008, it has said a great deal.
The major cases
- United States v. Miller (1939): Upheld a federal law on short-barreled shotguns, reasoning that such weapons had no clear relationship to a militia. For decades, lower courts read Miller as protecting a militia-related right.
- District of Columbia v. Heller (2008): Held, 5–4, that the amendment protects an individual right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, unconnected to militia service. The opinion said longstanding restrictions, such as bans on possession by felons and in sensitive places, were not called into question.
- McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010): Applied that individual right to state and local governments.
- New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022): Struck down New York’s requirement that people show “proper cause” to carry a handgun in public. More importantly, it set a new test: a gun regulation is constitutional only if it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
- United States v. Rahimi (2024): Upheld, 8–1, the federal ban on gun possession by people under domestic-violence restraining orders. The Court said modern laws need a historical analogue, not a “historical twin.”
How courts test gun laws now
Before Bruen, most lower courts weighed a law’s public-safety benefits against its burden on gun owners. That balancing is gone. Judges now ask whether the conduct is covered by the amendment’s text and, if so, whether the government can point to historical laws that are “relevantly similar” in how and why they burdened the right. The result has been a wave of challenges to laws on assault-style weapons, magazine limits, age limits and sensitive places, with lower courts reaching different conclusions.
Congress and the agencies
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, passed after the Uvalde school shooting, expanded background checks for buyers under 21 and funded state crisis-intervention programs. Agency rules have also been tested: in Garland v. Cargill (2024), the Court held that the federal machine-gun ban did not cover bump stocks, a question of statutory meaning rather than the Second Amendment.