Federal Appeals Court Upholds Post-Heller D.C. Gun Control Law

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a 2-1 decision today upholding the District of Columbia's Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008, which was enacted after the Supreme Court struck down D.C.'s handgun ban in District of Columbia v. Heller. Gun owner Dick Heller was once again at the center of the case, though as Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler observes, "this time he was not so lucky." Writing in dissent, D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh explains why he would have struck the law down:

D.C.'s law requiring registration of all lawfully possessed guns in D.C. is not part of the tradition of gun regulation in the United States; it is the most stringent such law in the Nation; and it is significantly more onerous than traditional licensing requirements or record-keeping requirements imposed only on gun sellers.  Registration requirements of the kind enacted by D.C. thus do not satisfy the Supreme Court's history- and tradition-based test.

Download today's decision in Heller v. D.C. here.