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1 1 (March 9, 2026)

handle is hein.crs/govettm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The Second Amendment at the Supreme Court: Challenges to Federal Gun Laws Updated March 9, 2026 Ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment provides, 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. For over two hundred years, the Supreme Court remained largely silent on the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment. In a series of relatively recent decisions, however, the Court has provided guidance on the substance of this constitutional provision. In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for certain purposes, including at least self-defense in the home. Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court determined that the right to bear arms applies not only to laws imposed by the federal government, but also to laws enacted at the state and local levels. In 2016, in Caetano v. Massachusetts, the Court in a brief opinion clarified that arms within the meaning of the Second Amendment encompasses modem arms, including stun guns, that did not exist at the time of the founding. In 2022, the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen resolved two of the questions left open by the preceding decisions: * Does the right to bear arms extend beyond the home? and * How are courts to properly analyze purported infringements of this right? In Bruen, the Court held that the protections of the Second Amendment extend beyond the home generally to places of confrontation. The Bruen Court also announced the standard to be used in assessing Second Amendment challenges to firearm laws: When the plain text ofthe Second Amendment covers the regulated conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects it; to justify a regulation of that conduct, the government must demonstrate that a challenged law is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Following Bruen, plaintiffs filed a number of legal actions contesting various federal and state firearm laws. Some of these cases involved challenges to long-standing provisions of the federal Gun Control Act prohibiting certain categories of individuals from possessing firearms. In one such case, United States v Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11108 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress