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Ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment provides, "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." For over two hundred years, the Supreme Court remained largely silent on the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment. In a series of relatively recent decisions, however, the Court has provided guidance on the substance of this constitutional provision.
In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for certain purposes, including at least self-defense in the home. Two years laterThis Sidebar is designed to serve as a guide to selected Second Amendment cases at the Supreme Court involving federal statutes and regulations. It summarizes modern Supreme Court Second Amendment cases. As of this writing, the Court has granted two new Second Amendment cases for review that raise the same Second Amendment question. This Sidebar provides an overview of these two cases and a case that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked the Court to review. (In general, petitions for review filed by DOJ may be more likely to be granted relative to petitions filed by other parties, which are not included in this Sidebar.) The Sidebar concludes with considerations for Congress.
Modern Supreme Court Jurisprudence
In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for certain purposes, including at least self-defense in the home. In the course of the opinion, the Court suggested that the right to keep and bear arms extends to weapons "in common use" for lawful purposes, but not to "dangerous and unusual weapons." In 2010, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court determined that the right to bear arms applies not only to laws imposed by the federal government, but also to laws enacted at the state and local levels. In 2016, in Caetano v. Massachusetts, the Court in a brief opinion clarified that "arms" within the meaning of the Second Amendment encompasses modern arms, including stun guns, that did not exist at the time of the founding.
In 2022, the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen resolved two of the questions left open by the preceding decisions:
and
In Bruen, the Court held that the protections of the Second Amendment extend beyond the home generally to places of confrontation. The Bruen Court also announced the standard to be usedcourts should use in assessing Second Amendment challenges to firearm laws: When the plain text of the Second Amendment covers the regulated conduct, the Constitution "presumptively protects" it; to justify a regulation of that conduct, the government must demonstrate that a challenged law "is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
Following Bruen, plaintiffs filed a number ofhave filed legal actions contesting various federal and state firearm laws. Some of these cases involved challenges to long-standing provisions of the federal Gun Control Actfederal laws prohibiting certain categories of individuals from possessing firearms. In one such case, United States v. Rahimi, a defendant contended that 18 U.S.C. § § 922(g)(8)—which prohibits individuals subject to certain domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms—is facially unconstitutional. In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding that Section 922(g)(8) is not facially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The Court reasoned that sufficient historical support existed for the principle that "[w]hen an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed" temporarily.
This Sidebar is designed to serve as a guide to selected Second Amendment cases at the Supreme Court involving federal statutes and regulations. The Sidebar does not discuss cases that challenge federal firearms statutes or regulations on some other legal basis.
As of this writing, the Court has granted two new Second Amendment cases for review. What follows is a list of (1) the two cases that the Court has accepted for review; (2) petitions involving the Second Amendment that the federal government has filed with the Court (which may be more likely to be granted relative to petitions filed by other parties); and (3) pending petitions for review, involving Second Amendment challenges to federal statutes or regulations, that have been filed with the Court by non-federal-government parties.
Cases are listed with identifying information and brief descriptions. The Sidebar concludes with considerations for Congress.
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in two Second Amendment cases:
The United States has filed two other petitions that present the same question at issue in Hemani:
It is possible that the Court will grant these petitions, vacate the underlying decisions, and remand the cases to the circuit level in light of the eventual decision in Hemani.
In both the Daniels and Sam petitions, the United States argued that Hemani is a "better vehicle" for the Court to address the constitutionality of Section 922(g)(3) because, according to the federal government, Daniels suffers from a "procedural wrinkle," and compared to Sam, the record in Hemani contains greater detail on the defendant's drug use. As such, the United States recommended that the Court grant the petition in Hemani, hold the Daniels and Sam petitions, and then dispose of them as appropriate following the ruling in Hemani.
This section lists petitions filed by nongovernmental parties involving federal statutes. As such, excluded from this list are any petitions contesting the constitutionality of state laws, such as state bans on the possession of particular semiautomatic weapons.
With this federal focus in mind, nongovernmental parties have brought their own challenges to the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3):
Parties also have mounted challenges to the "felon-in-possession" statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). A primary issue in these cases is whether, under Bruen, individuals convicted of nonviolent felonies may be prohibited from possessing firearms under Section 922(g)(1). In early 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in dozens of cases raising constitutional challenges to Section 922(g)(1), leaving the following petitions for further review:
Some petitions raise challenges to the age restrictions under 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1), which forbids licensed dealers and others from selling or delivering "any firearm or ammunition" to anyone under eighteen years of age or, "if the firearm, or ammunition is other than a shotgun or rifle, or ammunition for a shotgun or rifle," to anyone under twenty-one years of age:
The National Firearms Act (NFA), at 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), prohibits the possession of an unregistered firearm. A petition raises whether this provision "violates the Second Amendment as applied to [the defendant's] possessing an unregistered short-barreled shotgun, where [the defendant] introduced uncontradicted evidence proving that firearm is no more dangerous and unusual than comparable unregulated non-NFA weapons in common use for lawful purposes?"
One petition poses whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(k)—which prohibits any person from knowingly transporting, shipping, receiving, or possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number— "violates the Second Amendment on its face." (In general, an argument that a statute is unconstitutional "on its face" requires a party to prove that "no set of circumstances exists under which the [law] would be valid"—in other words, that "the law is unconstitutional in all of its applications" and not just in the challenging party's situation.)
Another petition concerns 18 U.S.C. § 922(0)(1), which makes it unlawful for anyone to transfer or possess a machinegun. The petition asks, "Whether a handgun affixed with a machinegun conversion device constitutes an 'arm' under the Second Amendment's plain text, thus requiring the government to justify the machinegun-possession prohibition under 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1) by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
In United States v. Hemani, the Supreme Court rejected the federal government's argument that another prohibition, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3)—which prohibits any person "who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" from possessing firearms—"automatically disarms anyone who regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance for anything other than its 'prescribed purpose,'" regardless of individualized circumstances, including "what controlled substance an individual uses, in what amounts he does so, or whether his drug use has ever made him a danger to himself or others." The Court determined that the government presented insufficient historical support for this interpretation of § 922(g)(3), ruling that the prosecution of the defendant based solely on his use of marijuana "a few times a week"—without proof of relevant individual circumstances—violated the Second Amendment. In Wolford v. Lopez, the Court held that a Hawaii law violated the Second Amendment; that law presumptively prohibited the carry of handguns by licensed concealed carry permit holders on private property open to the public without the property owner's express permission to the handgun carrier. The Court determined that the historical analogues offered by Hawaii were insufficiently comparable to the challenged law, as the analogues principally addressed property used for hunting, while the law covered other settings used for other purposes, such as retail establishments visited for commercial reasons. The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in two Second Amendment cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins. As the cases effectively pose the same constitutional question, the Court consolidated the cases. The Court agreed to address the following question, as framed in the Viramontes petition: "Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles."A Supreme Court decision on the two granted cases, and on any opinions on the aforementioned petitions that the Court accepts for review, could inform and impact the statutory framework Congress has enacted to regulate firearms. These opinions may not only clarify the status of existing federal firearms laws, but may help delineate permissible bounds of any future firearms legislation. Parallel developments in the courts of appeals may also offer further guidance for Congress on the constitutional standard established in Bruen and applied in Rahimi(A "facial" challenge argues that a statute is unconstitutional in all applications, in contrast with an "as applied" challenge, which argues that a statute is unconstitutional in specific circumstances.) In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected this argument, reasoning that sufficient historical support existed for the principle that "[w]hen an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed" temporarily.
Petitions Accepted by the Supreme Court
Pending Petition Filed by the Federal Government
United States v. Hembree, No. 25-1219. DOJ has filed a petition seeking review of a decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Federal appeals courts disagree as to whether the federal ban on individuals convicted of a felony from possessing firearms—located in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and commonly known as the "felon-in-possession" prohibition—violates the Second Amendment. Most circuits hold that felons are categorically barred from possessing firearms. A minority of circuits, including the Fifth Circuit, have taken a case-by-case approach to evaluating the constitutional validity of § 922(g)(1), upholding § 922(g)(1) in cases in which the defendant was convicted of an offense that is inherently violent or associated with violence. By contrast, the court has held that the statute cannot be constitutionally applied where the predicate felony is nonviolent, such as the possession of methamphetamine, as in Hembree, or failure to pay child support. In its petition, DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to "grant the petition, vacate the court of appeals' judgment, and remand the case for further consideration in light of Hemani." Following Hemani, however, the Court did not dispose of the petition as DOJ had requested. Instead, the Court has allowed the defendant to respond to DOJ's petition, suggesting that the Court has some interest in considering the petition notwithstanding its decision in Hemani. The Supreme Court cleared its merits docket for the October 2025 Term and is in recess as of this writing. Accordingly, the Court may not formally act on the Hembree petition until it sits for its September "long conference," which precedes the official beginning of the October Term 2026 and at which the Justices discuss pending petitions that have accumulated over the intervening summer months.Considerations for Congress
A Supreme Court decision on the two granted cases, and on any opinions on other petitions raising Second Amendment questions that the Court accepts for review, could inform and impact the statutory framework Congress has enacted to regulate firearms. These opinions may not only clarify the status of existing federal firearms laws but also help delineate permissible bounds of any future firearms legislation. Parallel developments in the courts of appeals may also offer further guidance for Congress on the constitutional standard established in Bruen and applied in Rahimi, Hemani, and Wolford.