The Second Amendment court cases that shape today’s gun laws are a small group of Supreme Court decisions, most of them from the last twenty years. Together they answer four questions in order: does the amendment protect an individual right, does it apply to states and cities, does it reach outside the home, and how are courts supposed to judge gun regulations at all. The cases below walk through those answers and then show where the law is still being fought out in the lower courts.
United States v. Miller (1939)
For most of the twentieth century, the only Supreme Court decision squarely on the Second Amendment was Miller. Jack Miller and Frank Layton were charged with transporting an unregistered short-barreled shotgun across state lines in violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934. The Court held that it could not say the amendment protects a weapon unless the weapon bears “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”1Justia. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)
For the next seven decades, lower federal courts read Miller broadly as endorsing a “collective rights” view: the right belonged to state militias, not individuals. Under that reading, judges routinely upheld gun regulations by concluding the amendment simply did not protect private ownership. The Supreme Court later said those courts had “overread” Miller, which had only addressed whether one specific weapon qualified for protection.2Justia. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)
District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
The case that reshaped American gun law began with a D.C. security guard, Dick Heller, who wanted to keep a handgun in his home. District law effectively banned handgun possession and required all other firearms to be stored unloaded and disassembled.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the D.C. ban and held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home.2Justia. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) The majority read the amendment’s two clauses separately. The prefatory clause about a well-regulated militia announces one purpose but does not limit the operative clause protecting “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.”3Congress.gov. Amdt2.4 Heller and Individual Right to Firearms The Court found handguns to be the weapon Americans have chosen for self-defense, so a complete ban was unconstitutional, as was the requirement that lawful firearms be kept inoperable at home.
What Governments Can Still Do After Heller
The individual right is not unlimited. The opinion listed several categories of regulation it called “presumptively lawful”: prohibitions on possession by felons and the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of firearms.2Justia. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) The Court also drew a line around “dangerous and unusual weapons,” noting that the right does not extend to military hardware like M-16 rifles.
Heller applied directly only to the federal government and territories under its control, because D.C. is a federal enclave. Whether states and cities were bound by the same rule was left for another day.
McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010)
Chicago’s near-total ban on handgun registration functioned much like the D.C. law struck down in Heller. Otis McDonald and other residents challenged the ban and argued that the Second Amendment should apply to state and local governments.
The Supreme Court agreed. Justice Alito’s majority opinion concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause makes the Second Amendment fully applicable to the states.4Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) The legal mechanism is called incorporation, the process by which the Court has gradually applied most of the Bill of Rights against state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.5Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.4.1 Overview of Incorporation of the Bill of Rights The Court found the right to keep and bear arms “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty” and “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”
After McDonald, every state and local government was bound by Heller. Cities could no longer impose blanket handgun bans, and similar restrictions in other cities were successfully challenged. Both Heller and McDonald involved guns kept at home, though. Neither said anything definitive about carrying in public.
Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016)
The Court briefly returned to what counts as a protected “arm” in a per curiam ruling that vacated a Massachusetts conviction for possessing a stun gun. It rejected three arguments the state court had used to deny protection: that stun guns did not exist in 1791, that they are not useful in warfare, and that they are not common enough. The Second Amendment, the Court reaffirmed, covers bearable arms that did not exist at the founding.6Justia. Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 411 (2016)
New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022)
New York required anyone seeking a license to carry a concealed handgun to demonstrate “proper cause,” a standard that gave licensing officials wide discretion to deny permits. Applicants who cited general self-defense concerns were routinely rejected. Two applicants challenged the system after their requests for unrestricted carry permits were denied.7Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen
The Supreme Court struck down the proper-cause requirement and held that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a firearm for self-defense outside the home. Bruen did something more consequential than resolve a single licensing dispute, though. It replaced the analytical framework nearly every lower court had been using for over a decade.
The History-and-Tradition Test
Under the new framework, analysis starts with the amendment’s text. If the person challenging a law is one of “the people” and the regulated conduct involves keeping or bearing “arms,” the Second Amendment presumptively applies. The burden then shifts to the government to prove the regulation is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”7Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen The government does not need an identical historical law, but it must identify a historical analogue with comparable justification and comparable burden on gun rights.
The consequences are far-reaching. Judges no longer defer to legislative judgments about public safety. Every gun regulation challenged in court is measured against eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practice, and if no relevant historical tradition supports a restriction, it fails.
What This Means for Carry Permits
The Court did not mandate any particular licensing system, but it made clear that “shall-issue” regimes, where officials must grant a permit to any applicant meeting objective criteria like a background check or safety training, appear constitutional. Systems that give officials discretion to deny permits based on a subjective assessment of the applicant’s need do not survive.7Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen The decision also confirmed that governments may designate certain “sensitive places” as off-limits, adding legislative assemblies, courthouses, and polling places to the list from Heller.
United States v. Rahimi (2024)
The first major test of Bruen’s historical framework came in a domestic violence case. Zackey Rahimi was subject to a civil restraining order after a court found he posed a credible threat to his former girlfriend. Federal law, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), prohibits anyone under such an order from possessing firearms.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts The Fifth Circuit struck down the statute, concluding that no historical analogue justified it.
The Supreme Court reversed on June 21, 2024. It held that “when an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”9Justia. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. ___ (2024) The historical test, the Court emphasized, does not require a founding-era twin for every modern regulation. It requires that the regulation fit within a broader historical principle, and here the principle was that governments have long had authority to disarm individuals who present a demonstrated danger to others.
Rahimi calmed some of the alarm that followed Bruen. Critics had worried the historical framework was so rigid that virtually no modern gun regulation could survive. The Rahimi majority showed that courts have some flexibility to draw analogies at a higher level of generality, at least when physical danger is involved.
A Note on Statutory Cases: Cargill
Not every major firearms case at the Supreme Court is a Second Amendment case. In Garland v. Cargill, decided on June 14, 2024, the Court ruled that bump stocks are not “machineguns” under the National Firearms Act.10Supreme Court of the United States. Garland v. Cargill A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger,” which is the statutory definition of a machinegun. The ATF had exceeded its authority by stretching the definition, but Congress remains free to ban bump stocks by legislation. The ruling turned on how a federal agency read a statute, not on the scope of the Second Amendment. The same is true of Bondi v. VanDerStok (2025), where the Court upheld the ATF’s authority to regulate ghost guns under the Gun Control Act.
What Is Still Unsettled
The cases above set the framework. Much of what happens next is being worked out in the federal appeals courts, and several splits are heading toward the Supreme Court.
The Felon-in-Possession Ban
Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison is permanently barred from possessing firearms. Heller called such prohibitions “presumptively lawful,” but Bruen has prompted courts to look more carefully at whether history actually supports a blanket ban covering every felony, violent or not.
The circuits are deeply split.11Congress.gov. Courts Disagree as to Whether the Federal Felon-in-Possession Statute Is Constitutional The Third Circuit, in Range v. Attorney General, held that the ban could not constitutionally be applied to Bryan Range, whose only felony was a decades-old conviction for a false statement on a food stamp application. The court found the government had shown no historical tradition of permanently disarming people convicted of minor, nonviolent offenses.12United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Range v. Attorney General of the United States The Ninth Circuit reached a similar conclusion in United States v. Duarte. The Seventh, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have gone the opposite way, relying on Heller’s language about “longstanding prohibitions” or finding historical support for disarming those who pose a risk of dangerousness without requiring an offense-by-offense analysis. The eventual ruling will affect hundreds of thousands of people with old or nonviolent convictions.
Drug Users and Marijuana
Federal law bars anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from possessing firearms under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). With marijuana now legal in some form in a majority of states, millions of Americans who use it lawfully under state law remain federal criminals if they own a gun.
The Fifth Circuit struck down the ban as applied to a marijuana user who was not impaired at the time of possession, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, United States v. Hemani. Oral arguments took place on March 2, 2026, and a decision is expected before the term ends. The ruling could determine whether the government needs to show that a prohibited person actually poses a danger, or whether mere membership in a statutory category is enough.
Young Adults Ages 18 to 20
Federal law prohibits licensed dealers from selling handguns to anyone under 21. In Reese v. ATF (2025), the Fifth Circuit struck down that restriction, finding that 18-to-20-year-olds are part of “the people” and that the government failed to identify a historical tradition of barring young adults from acquiring firearms. The Tenth Circuit upheld a similar state-level restriction around the same time. Another split waiting for resolution.
Assault Weapons and Magazine Bans
Several states ban semiautomatic rifles that meet feature-based definitions and cap magazine capacity at 10 rounds. Federal appeals courts have generally upheld these restrictions. The Ninth Circuit upheld California’s magazine capacity limit in Duncan v. Bonta in March 2025, and the Seventh Circuit upheld a Cook County assault weapons ban shortly after. No federal appeals court has struck down an assault weapons ban, though cases in the Third Circuit could change that. A petition in Duncan v. Bonta has been repeatedly relisted at the Supreme Court’s conference, a sign the justices are weighing whether to take it up.
Waiting Periods
Federal courts are split on whether mandatory waiting periods between purchase and delivery violate the Second Amendment. The First Circuit allowed Maine’s 72-hour waiting period to stand, reasoning that it regulates the timing of acquisition rather than the right to keep or bear arms. The Tenth Circuit struck down New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period, finding it likely infringed on the right to acquire firearms. Until the Supreme Court weighs in, the answer depends on where you live.
Where the Law Stands Now
The progression from Miller to Rahimi has produced a framework with clear anchor points. Individuals have a right to possess commonly owned firearms for self-defense, at home and in public. That right applies against every level of government. And any regulation burdening it must be justified by historical tradition, not just a legislative judgment about public safety.
Within that framework, plenty of regulations remain valid. Prohibitions on carrying in genuinely sensitive locations like courthouses and schools are on solid ground. Background checks for commercial sales are unquestioned. Restrictions on possession by people found by a court to be dangerous have survived. The contested territory lies in the spaces between: blanket bans based on felony status regardless of the crime, prohibitions tied to drug use, age-based purchase restrictions, waiting periods, and bans on specific weapon types. Those are the fights the Supreme Court will be resolving for years to come.