Here are a few lines from a recent SCOTUS ruling on guns:

A District of Columbia law banned handgun possession by making it a crime to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibited the registration of handguns.

The law provided separately that no person may carry an unlicensed handgun, but authorized the police chief to issue 1-year licenses; and required residents to keep lawfully owned firearms unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device.

Respondent Heller, a D. C. special policeman, applied to register a handgun he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He filed this suit seeking to prevent the city from enforcing the bar on handgun registration, the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits carrying an unlicensed firearm in the home, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of functional firearms in the home.

The District Court dismissed the suit, but the Appellate Court reversed the District ruling, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept non-functional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right.