Brian Doherty on the Three Most Important Ongoing Second Amendment Cases
Since the 2010 Supreme Court case, McDonald v. Chicago, which applied the ruling in the 2008 Heller case to states and localities, the Court has so far evaded any new case about the limits and meaning of the Second Amendment.
Those two cases, though, did not resolve all the important questions about how and when and why the government can restrict Second Amendment rights. Heller and McDonald said that the right to possess commonly used weapons for self-defense in the home cannot be infringed, but Justice Antonin Scalia in his majority opinion in Heller explicitly said this didn't mean anything goes when it comes to Americans and their guns.
Many other cases that try to define the whos, whens, and hows of our Second Amendment rights are percolating through the lower courts, and some are trying to wend their way to the Supreme Court. Brian Doherty takes a look at three of the most relevant active cases involving the Second Amendment, ones that promise to expand Second Amendment liberty, and resolve some of the core issues left unresolved by Heller and McDonald.