Where Would We Stand Without Heller?

By BearingArms.com Staff

Sponsored by NRA-ILA

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the District’s “good-reason” requirement for concealed carry, it begged the question once more: Where would we be without Heller?

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) was the seminal Supreme Court decision that reaffirmed that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual one, in no way tied to or dependent upon service in the military or militia. In other words, it is a right possessed by each American at birth, and it comes without stipulation or caveat.

When the Heller ruling was handed down in late June 2008, it eviscerated restrictions on free people who were being punished by prescriptive firearm laws in Washington, D.C. In so doing, it sent shockwaves through the establishment media, the Democratic Party and gun control groups around the country.

Two years later, Heller played a role in the Supreme Court’s McDonald v. Chicago (2010), a ruling that leaned on Heller and reaffirmed not simply the individual nature of the right to keep and bear arms, but also the fact that that right—like others in the Bill of Rights—is incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment. In other words, the …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms