The Supreme Court’s Heller decision
The Court Establishes a Right to Possess Handguns
The Second Amendment states that “[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.” Before the Supreme Court’s 2008 opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, the right generally had been understood by federal courts to be intertwined with military or militia use. …