3.12 The Second Amendment

Second Amendment Protections

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution states, “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.”  The Second Amendment places substantive limits on laws regulating firearms.

Laws banning the possession of handguns by law-abiding citizens are presumed to be unconstitutional, since they interfere with the “the core lawful purpose of self-defense” (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008, p. 630). The Heller case specifically endorsed the legality of certain gun control regulations, such as bans on firearm possession by convicted felons and people with serious mental illnesses, bans on carrying firearms “in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,” bans on carrying concealed weapons, and regulations limiting the conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008, p. 626). The constitutionality of a variety of other gun-related laws has yet to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Like other constitutional rights, however, the right to bear arms is not unlimited. The Second Amendment does not imply a right to possess weapons suitable for warfare, rather than self-defense, such as bazookas, bombs, grenades, tanks, or biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons (Owen, et. al, 2019).