Heller Loses Round Two

(Jonathan H. Adler)

Today the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit released a divided opinion in Heller v. D.C. . In this case, Dick Heller (of the Supreme Court's Heller decision) is challenging the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008 (FRA), a statute adopted by the District of Columbia in response to the Supreme Court's decision invalidating the District's prior gun controls. Whereas Heller had prevailed in the D.C. Circuit before, this time he was not so lucky. The panel majority, consisting of Judges Ginsburg and Henderson, largely rejected his challenge to D.C.'s ban on some semi-automatic rifles and new gun-registration requirements. Judge Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy dissent.