Ms. Winter
Honors Civics & Economics B-1
Case name: DC V. Heller
A controversial topic came about in the year of 2008. It was concerning whether or not DC’s gun law was following along the lines of the Second Amendment Rights. A man by the name of Dick Anthony Heller was a special police officer and had gone in to register for a handgun for his home. The true underlying issue was whether or not the rights were protected under the Second Amendments which states: The right to bear arms. The uprising stipulation in the District of Columbia is that they have a state law that concerns the registration of a handgun. When looking into further depth of the law the following things must be adhered to in the stipulations of having a hand gun. It states that in order to have a registered handgun it must be “…unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger unless they are being used for lawful recreational activities or located in a place of business.
("DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER." n.pag. SIRS Government Reporter. Web. 24 Jan 2013.) When the case was first taken up before it came to the Supreme Court, in the lower court system the verdict was dismissed until it was later reversed. The two court systems that herd the case before the Supreme Court were the Courts of Appeals and the district court. The arraignments for the plaintiff were; Dick Anthony Heller was dismissed for another four years until it was taken up again. In the arraignments for the Defendants “…DC found that the challenge to the constitution and its validity was without merit …” It seems as if they were trying to throw salt on the technicality of what the Constitution says in Amendment two and the right to bear arms. In the end what the plaintiff really wanted were his rights to be acknowledged, being that it’s in the constitution and he was a police officer at the time. As well as he wants to be able to have a gun in his house for protection as most people would want.