D.C. Handgun Ban Found Unconstitutional

Wow.

This is perhaps the biggest news to hit the firearms community in a very long time. No one is sure of all the implications yet, but it's pretty much guaranteed that this will head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

From this initial source:

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. appeals court struck down a three-decade-old District of Columbia law that bans residents from keeping a handgun in their homes, saying the Constitution's Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington also threw out a district law requiring registered firearms to be kept disassembled or under trigger lock.

It's the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a gun-control measure on Second Amendment grounds. Nelson Lund, a constitutional law professor at George Mason University in neighboring Virginia, said an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is "very likely.''

"This is clearly an extremely significant ruling,'' Lund said. "The District of Columbia had some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.'' The appeals court said it didn't consider whether the district can bar people from carrying handguns in public or in cars.

If you really want to get technical, you can find the official (and lengthy) court ruling here.

Below is a sub-section of that document. Much of the ruling ties in closely with things we've been talking about here recently. I added emphasis in those places.

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.