Five Supreme Court cases

United States v. Miller (1939)

United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), was decided on May 15, 1939. The case was an appeal from a judgment sustaining a demurrer to an indictment under the National Firearms Act.²

The syllabus describes the charge as transporting in interstate commerce a 12-gauge shotgun with a barrel less than 18 inches long, without having registered it and without having in possession a stamp-affixed written order, as the Act required. The syllabus says the Act, as so applied, was held not unconstitutional as an invasion of the reserved powers of the states, and not violative of the Second Amendment. It adds that the Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such a weapon.²

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” 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.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was decided on June 26, 2008. The syllabus describes District of Columbia provisions that banned handgun possession by prohibiting registration of handguns, and that required lawfully owned firearms to be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device. Heller, who had been refused registration of a handgun he wished to keep at home, sued.³

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

The syllabus also says the handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement, as applied to self-defense, violate the Second Amendment. It states that the District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of arms that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense.³ The same syllabus states a limit:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not 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.

McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010)

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), was decided on June 28, 2010. The syllabus says Chicago and the village of Oak Park had laws effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens, and that the Seventh Circuit had affirmed judgments rejecting a Second and Fourteenth Amendment challenge, relying on older cases that treated the Second Amendment as applying only to the federal government.⁴

The Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States.

The syllabus says Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II–A, II–B, II–D, and III, concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right, recognized in Heller, to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. The judgment of the Seventh Circuit was reversed and the case remanded.⁴

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022)

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), was decided on June 23, 2022. The syllabus says New York made it a crime to possess a firearm without a license, whether inside or outside the home, and that an applicant for an unrestricted license to carry a concealed pistol or revolver had to show “proper cause.” It describes proper cause, under the state decisions the syllabus cites, as a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community. The petitioners’ applications, based on a generalized interest in self-defense, were denied.⁵

New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.

The syllabus states the method the Court applied. Under Heller, when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The syllabus says the Court rejects the two-step approach, used by courts of appeals after Heller, that combined history with means-end scrutiny.⁵

United States v. Rahimi (2024)

United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915, was decided on June 21, 2024. The syllabus says Zackey Rahimi was indicted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits an individual subject to a specified domestic-violence restraining order from possessing a firearm. A prosecution may proceed only if the order meets criteria in the statute, including a finding that the person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner or child, or an explicit prohibition on the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against those persons. While the case was on appeal, the Court decided Bruen. The Fifth Circuit then held that the government had not shown that section 922(g)(8) fits within the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.⁶

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.

The syllabus reports the Fifth Circuit’s judgment reversed and the case remanded. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Justices Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion. Justices Sotomayor, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson also filed concurrences, Justice Sotomayor’s joined by Justice Kagan.⁶

How these cases relate to statutes

The statutes described on the federal-law page remain the enacted text. A court opinion controls how that text is applied when the opinion reaches it. Rahimi addresses section 922(g)(8) in the circumstances the opinion describes. It does not, in the sentences quoted here, decide every other disqualification in section 922(g). State statutes are subject to the Fourteenth Amendment holding in McDonald and to later decisions, including Bruen. What a particular state statute says is a separate question, taken up only by linking to the official state text.

Notes

1. Syllabus note, New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022) (slip opinion), and United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915 (U.S. June 21, 2024) (slip opinion). Each states that the syllabus is not part of the opinion and was prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader, citing United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337. ↩
2. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), U.S. Reports (Library of Congress). ↩
3. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), U.S. Reports (Library of Congress). ↩
4. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), U.S. Reports (Library of Congress). ↩
5. New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), slip opinion (supremecourt.gov). ↩
6. United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915 (U.S. June 21, 2024), slip opinion (supremecourt.gov). The bound United States Reports page was still marked as a page proof pending publication when this page was reviewed, so the citation used here is the slip opinion. ↩