In a split 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.'s three decade old ban on handguns, declared Americans have the right to own firearms for protection and hunting, and issued its first major pronouncement on the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment since the amendment was ratified in 1791.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia reasoned the District's ban on handgun and its requirement that other guns stored in the home be "unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device" was an unconstitutional encroachment on the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment reads, "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" and the case raised the question of whether an individual citizen has a constitutional right to own a gun or whether that right is somehow tied to a state militia.
"There will be a lot of challenges to gun restrictions," said John Eastman, a constitutional lawyer and dean of Chapman University's School of Law. Mr. Eastman recognized Mr. Scalia attempted to limit the scope of the decision, but argued the majority opinion "leaves open a whole range of other restrictions" that could be challenged.
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