District of Columbia v. Heller

Michael Waldman The Second Amendment: A Biography
Adam Winkler Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms
Dennis Baron 2019 Corpus Evidence Illuminates the Meaning of Bear Arms

Hawaii Supreme Court dismisses District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) , McDonald-Chicago (2010) , and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) in 2024-02-07 Hawaii v. Wilson.

Original Text

Analogous Laws

Notable Items:

Holds that there is an individualized right to "keep and bear arms".
... nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on

• longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or
• laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or
• laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
  
• Adam Winkler Scrutinizing the Second Amendment Michigan Law ReviewMichigan Law Rev

Note: From Bruen: ... a practice that “arose in the second half of the 19th century ... cannot by itself establish an early American tradition” informing our understanding of the First Amendment. Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue, 591 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2020) cited in Need entry for NewYorkStateRiflePistolAssociation-Bruen (Barrett concurring and adding "So today’s decision should not be understood to endorse freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century to establish the original meaning of the Bill of Rights") knocks out Lanier, Andrews, English, Cruikshank, Miller, Presser, Kessler leaving only Johnson, Langford, O'Neill, Reid, Nunn, Chandler, Langford, Aymette, Houston (US), Sheldon (US) as precedents.

1. PA: Johnson v. Tompkins 1833 right to carry arms in defence of his property or person
2. AL: O’Neill v. State 1849 no specifics
3. AL: State v. Reid 1840 statute ... requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional
4. GA: Nunn v. State 1846 Second Amendment as protecting the “natural right of self-defence”
5. LA: State v. Chandler 1850 right to carry arms openly
6. NC: State v. Langford 1824 the defendants, with force and arms, at the house of one S. R., situate, etc., did then and there wickedly, maliciously, and mischievously, and to the terror and dismay of the said S. R., fire several guns
7. TN: Aymette v. State 1840 “bear” arms did not prohibit the banning of concealed weapons
8. US: Houston v. Moore 1820 States have concurrent power over the militia
9. US: United States v. Sheldon 1829 "No rights are intended to be granted by the constitution for an unlawful or unjustifiable purpose."

1. NC: State v. Lanier 1874 the offense of going armed with dangerous or unusual weapons is a crime against the public peace by terrifying the good people of the land,
2. TN: Andrews v. State 1871 forbade openly carrying a pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or place, or circumstances,” 50 Tenn., at 187, violated the state constitutional provision
3. TX: English v. State 1871 Texas law forbade anyone from “carrying on or about his person . . . any pistol . . . unless he has reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person.” 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws §1. The Texas Supreme Court upheld that restriction in English v. State as cited in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ___ (2022)

Issue(s) Before the Court:

Petitioner's Claim(s):

Respondent's Claim(s):

Holding(s) and Disposition:

• that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment,
• as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.
• Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.

Material Facts:

• The District of Columbia generally prohibits the possession of handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited.
• ... no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the chief of police may issue licenses for 1-year periods.
• District of Columbia law also requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms, such as registered long guns, “unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless they are located in a place of business or are being used for lawful recreational activities.
• Respondent applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wished to keep at home, but the District refused.
• A full recounting of the facts is available below

Procedural History:

• The District Court dismissed respondent’s complaint, see Parker v. District of Columbia, 311 F. Supp. 2d 103, 109 (2004).
• The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, construing his complaint as seeking the right to render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in that condition only when necessary for self-defense, reversed, see Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F. 3d 370, 401 (2007).
• [Holding] that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right.
• The Court of Appeals directed the District Court to enter summary judgment for respondent.

Rationale

Scalia Majority Opinion (Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito)

• Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.
• It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed.
• Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid. [not the case at time of ratification]
• We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times.
• This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.
• We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license will satisfy respondent’s prayer for relief and do not address the licensing requirement. [based upon “not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”]
• A full description of the rationale is available below

Stevens Dissent (Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)

• Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals.
• But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.
• Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case.
• The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia.
• Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms.
• Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.
• The view of the Amendment we took in Miller—that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it does not curtail the Legislature’s power to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons—is both the most natural reading of the Amendment’s text and the interpretation most faithful to the history of its adoption.
• Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses [civilian use or misuse of weapons].
• I Language of the Second Amendment
• The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three important points.
• It identifies the preservation of the militia as the Amendment’s purpose;
• it explains that the militia is necessary to the security of a free State; and
• it recognizes that the militia must be “well regulated.”
• “[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 174 (1803).
• The centerpiece of the Court’s textual argument is its insistence that the words “the people” as used in the Second Amendment must have the same meaning, and protect the same class of individuals, as when they are used in the First and Fourth Amendments.
• But the Court itself reads the Second Amendment to protect a “subset” significantly narrower than the class of persons protected by the First and Fourth Amendments; when it finally drills down on the substantive meaning of the Second Amendment, the Court limits the protected class to “law-abiding, responsible citizens,”
• But the class of persons protected by the First and Fourth Amendments is not so limited; for even felons (and presumably irresponsible citizens as well) may invoke the protections of those constitutional provisions.
• ... it is only the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, that is described as a right of “the people.”
• These rights contemplate collective action.
• As used in the Second Amendment, the words “the people” do not enlarge the right to keep and bear arms to encompass use or ownership of weapons outside the context of service in a well-regulated militia.
• The unmodified use of “bear arms,” by contrast, refers most naturally to a military purpose, as evidenced by its use in literally dozens of contemporary texts.
• ... a number of state militia laws in effect at the time of the Second Amendment’s drafting used the term “keep” to describe the requirement that militia members store their arms at their homes, ready to be used for service when necessary.
• Rather, the single right that it does describe is both a duty and a right to have arms available and ready for military service, and to use them for military purposes when necessary.
• When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.
• II History of the Second Amendment]
• The proper allocation of military power in the new Nation was an issue of central concern for the Framers.
• The compromises they ultimately reached, reflected in Article I’s Militia Clauses and the Second Amendment, represent quintessential examples of the Framers’ “splitting the atom of sovereignty.”
• For it was perceived by some that Article I contained a significant gap: While it empowered Congress to organize, arm, and discipline the militia, it did not prevent Congress from providing for the militia’s disarmament.
• Madison’s initial inclusion of an exemption for conscientious objectors sheds revelatory light on the purpose of the Amendment. It confirms an intent to describe a duty as well as a right, and it unequivocally identifies the military character of both.
• But state militias could not effectively check the prospect of a federal standing army so long as Congress retained the power to disarm them, and so a guarantee against such disarmament was needed.
• III Other Sources
• our other sources: the 17th-century English Bill of Rights; Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England; postenactment commentary on the Second Amendment; and post-Civil War legislative history.
• Article VII of the [English] Bill of Rights was a response to that selective disarmament; it guaranteed that “the Subjects which are Protestants may have Armes for their defence, ....
• Blackstone described an interpretive approach that gave far more weight to preambles than the Court allows.
• Thus, the proeme, or preamble, is often called in to help the construction of an act of parliament.
• [Story:] “The importance of [the Second Amendment] will scarcely be doubted by any persons who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country....
• IV Legislative History
• In 1792, the year after the Amendment was ratified, Congress passed a statute that purported to establish “an Uniform Militia throughout the United States.” 1 Stat. 271. The statute commanded every able-bodied white male citizen between the ages of 18 and 45 to be enrolled therein and to “provide himself with a good musket or firelock” and other specified weaponry. [To wit:] “a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle and a quarter of a pound of powder.” 1 Stat. 271.
• V Conclusion
• Until today, it has been understood that legislatures may regulate the civilian use and misuse of firearms so long as they do not interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia.
• The Court’s announcement of a new constitutional right to own and use firearms for private purposes upsets that settled understanding, ....
• The Court properly disclaims any interest in evaluating the wisdom of the specific policy choice challenged in this case, but it fails to pay heed to a far more important policy choice—the choice made by the Framers themselves.

Breyer Dissent (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg)

Full Recounting of Facts

• The District of Columbia generally prohibits the possession of handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited.
• ... no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the chief of police may issue licenses for 1-year periods.
• District of Columbia law also requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms, such as registered long guns, “unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless they are located in a place of business or are being used for lawful recreational activities.
• Respondent applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wished to keep at home, but the District refused.
• He thereafter filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city from enforcing
  1. the bar on the registration of handguns,
  2. the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits the carrying of a firearm in the home without a license, and
  3. the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of “functional firearms within the home.”
• The District Court dismissed respondent’s complaint, see Parker v. District of Columbia, 311 F. Supp. 2d 103, 109 (2004).
• The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, construing his complaint as seeking the right to render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in that condition only when necessary for self-defense, reversed, see Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F. 3d 370, 401 (2007).
• [Holding] that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right.
• The Court of Appeals directed the District Court to enter summary judgment for respondent.
• A list of the material facts is available above

Majority Full Argument

• II A: The Meaning of 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.”
• In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931); see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824).
• Petitioners and today’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service.
• The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause.
• The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose.
• Although this structure of the Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose. See generally Volokh, The Commonplace Second Amendment, 73 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 793, 814–821 (1998).
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 1. Operative Clause, a. “Right of the People.”
• The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology.
• Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people” in a context other than “rights”.
• Those provisions arguably refer to “the people” acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights.
• What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. As we said in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 265 (1990)
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 1. Operative Clause, b. “Keep and bear Arms.”
• The term [arms] was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.
• Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”
• These provisions demonstrate—again, in the most analogous linguistic context—that “bear arms” was not limited to the carrying of arms in a militia.
• The phrase “bear Arms” also had at the time of the founding an idiomatic meaning that was significantly different from its natural meaning: “to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight” or “to wage war.”
• But it unequivocally bore that idiomatic meaning only when followed by the preposition “against,” which was in turn followed by the target of the hostilities.
• And even if “keep and bear Arms” were a unitary phrase, we find no evidence that it bore a military meaning.
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 1. Operative Clause, c. Meaning of the Operative Clause.
• Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.
• We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. [all of the rights are pre-existing. they are NOT grants of the gov't.]
• Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 2. Prefactory Clause
• The prefatory clause reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State … .”
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 2. Prefactory Clause, a. “Well-Regulated Militia.”
• “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” That definition comports with founding-era sources.
• Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assumption that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and the Second Amendment, we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia.
• Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 2. Prefactory Clause, b. “Security of a Free State.”
• The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued, see 478 F. 3d, at 405, and n. 10.
• II A The Meaning of the Second Amendment, 3. Relationship between Prefatory Clause and Operative Clause.
• Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms?
• It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above.
• The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.
• II B State Constitutions to 1820
• Our interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment.
• [Clearly two (PA, VT), and perhaps (MA, NC) ] Four States adopted analogues to the Federal Second Amendment in the period between independence and the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
• The historical narrative that petitioners must endorse would thus treat the Federal Second Amendment as an odd outlier, protecting a right unknown in state constitutions or at English common law, based on little more than an overreading of the prefatory clause.
• II C Contra Stevens
• It is true, as Justice Stevens says, that there was concern that the Federal Government would abolish the institution of the state militia.
• The Second Amendment right, protecting only individuals’ liberty to keep and carry arms, did nothing to assuage Antifederalists’ concerns about federal control of the militia.
• Justice Stevens’ view thus relies on the proposition, unsupported by any evidence, that different people of the founding period had vastly different conceptions of the right to keep and bear arms.
• That simply does not comport with our longstanding view that the Bill of Rights codified venerable, widely understood liberties. [witness widely differing views regarding slavery at that time.]
• II D History to 1900
• We now address how the Second Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century.
• II D: 1. Post-ratification Commentary
• St. George Tucker’s version of Blackstone’s Commentaries, as we explained above, conceived of the Blackstonian arms right as necessary for self-defense. See 2 Tucker’s Blackstone 143.
• Rawle clearly differentiated between the people’s right to bear arms and their service in a militia:
• Story explained that the English Bill of Rights had also included a “right to bear arms,” a right that, as we have discussed, had nothing to do with militia service. 3 Story §1858.
• Story’s Commentaries also cite as support Tucker and Rawle, both of whom clearly viewed the right as unconnected to militia service. See 3 Story §1890, n. 2; §1891, n. 3
• II D: 2. Pre-Civil War Case Law
• Many early 19th-century state cases indicated that the Second Amendment right to bear arms was an individual right unconnected to militia service, though subject to certain restrictions.
• In Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846), the Georgia Supreme Court construed the Second Amendment as protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly.
• Likewise, in State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann. 489, 490 (1850), the Louisiana Supreme Court held that citizens had a right to carry arms openly....
• II D: 3. Post-Civil War Legislation.
• The understanding that the Second Amendment gave freed blacks the right to keep and bear arms was reflected in congressional discussion of the bill, with even an opponent of it saying that the founding generation “were for every man bearing his arms about him and keeping them in his house, his castle, for his own defense.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 362, 371 (1866) (Sen. Davis).
• It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense.
• II D: 4. Post-Civil War Commentators.
• Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual right unconnected with militia service.
• II E
• We now ask whether any of our precedents forecloses the conclusions we have reached about the meaning of the Second Amendment.
• United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, in the course of vacating the convictions of members of a white mob for depriving blacks of their right to keep and bear arms, held that the Second Amendment does not by its own force apply to anyone other than the Federal Government.
• States, we said, were free to restrict or protect the right under their police powers. [the issue of this case]
• Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252 (1886), held that the right to keep and bear arms was not violated by a law that forbade “bodies of men to associate together as military organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in cities and towns unless authorized by law.”
• United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939) ... Rather, it was that the type of weapon at issue was not eligible for Second Amendment protection: “In the absence of any evidence tending to show that the possession or use of a [short-barreled shotgun] at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” [prefactory being used to limit operative clause]
• This holding is not only consistent with, but positively suggests, that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms (though only arms that “have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”). [grenades, automatic weapons, LAW, RPG, M-79, M-203, light machine guns, claymores and all other individual born arms]
• The traditional militia was formed from a pool of men bringing arms “in common use at the time” for lawful purposes like self-defense. [excludes handguns. not in common use at that time.]
• It should be unsurprising that such a significant matter has been for so long judicially unresolved. [by the Supreme Court...who says lower courts did not hear cases and the Supreme Court did not ndeny cert.]
• It is demonstrably not true that, as Justice Stevens claims, post, at 41–42, “for most of our history, the invalidity of Second-Amendment-based objections to firearms regulations has been well settled and uncontroversial.”
• For most of our history the question did not present itself. [with permission of the Supreme Court which may have denied cert. Miller granted cert in order to REVERSE the lower court]
• III
• Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.
• nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
• We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. [at what time...any weapon developed thereafter was not previously in common use. common use in the militia/military or among the general public. state law allowed to exclude weapons based upon what is not in common use in that state. how does a weapon enter common use then. handguns not in common use at that time.]
• It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.
• But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right [of self-defense].
• A summary of the above is available in NYSRPA-Bruen (2022) Section II B 1
• IV (page 628. opinion began on page 573...55 pages later we arrive at the legal arguments which take up 8 pages.)
• We turn finally to the law at issue here.
• As we have said, the law totally bans handgun possession in the home.
• It also requires that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering it inoperable.
• As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right.
• The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose.
• The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.
• Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” 478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.
• It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed.
• Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid. [not the case at time of ratification]
• We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times.
• This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.
• The nonexistence of a self-defense exception is also suggested by the D. C. Court of Appeals’ statement that the statute forbids residents to use firearms to stop intruders, see McIntosh v. Washington, 395 A. 2d 744, 755–756 (1978).
• We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license will satisfy respondent’s prayer for relief and do not address the licensing requirement. [based upon “not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”]
• In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.
• Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.
• We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
• The core of the rationale is available above

Cases cited by Scalia in Section II D

1. PA: Johnson v. Tompkins 1833 right to carry arms in defence of his property or person
2. AL: O’Neill v. State 1849 no specifics
3. AL: State v. Reid 1840 statute ... requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional
4. GA: Nunn v. State 1846 Second Amendment as protecting the “natural right of self-defence”
5. LA: State v. Chandler 1850 right to carry arms openly
6. NC: State v. Langford 1824 the defendants, with force and arms, at the house of one S. R., situate, etc., did then and there wickedly, maliciously, and mischievously, and to the terror and dismay of the said S. R., fire several guns
7. NC: State v. Lanier 1874 the offense of going armed with dangerous or unusual weapons is a crime against the public peace by terrifying the good people of the land,
8. TN: Andrews v. State 1871 forbade openly carrying a pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or place, or circumstances,” 50 Tenn., at 187, violated the state constitutional provision
9. TN: Aymette v. State 1840 “bear” arms did not prohibit the banning of concealed weapons
10. TX: English v. State 1871 Texas law forbade anyone from “carrying on or about his person . . . any pistol . . . unless he has reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person.” 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws §1. The Texas Supreme Court upheld that restriction in English v. State as cited in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ___ (2022)

1. US: Houston v. Moore 1820 States have concurrent power over the militia
2. US: United States v. Sheldon 1829 "No rights are intended to be granted by the constitution for an unlawful or unjustifiable purpose."
3. US: United States v. Cruikshank 1875 held that the Second Amendment does not by its own force apply to anyone other than the Federal Government.
4. US: United States v. Miller 1939 Second Amendment did not apply was not that the defendants were “bear[ing] arms” not “for … military purposes” but for “nonmilitary use,”

1. MD: Waters v. State 1843 to make it unlawful for them [blacks] to bear arms
2. VA: Aldridge v. Commonwealth 1824 Constitution did not extend to free blacks

1. IL: Presser v. Illinois 1886 right to keep and bear arms was not violated by a law that forbade “bodies of men to associate together as military organizations....
2. OR: State v. Kessler 1980 [small-arms] weapons used by militiamen and weapons used in defense of person and home were one and the same.”

1. DC: McIntosh v. Washington 1978 statute forbids residents to use firearms to stop intruders