Protect Your Rights

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms and was adopted on December 15, 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court ruled in the 2008 Heller decision that the right belongs to individuals in their homes for self-defense. while also ruling that the right is not unlimited and does not preclude the existence of certain long-standing prohibitions such as those forbidding “the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill” or restrictions on “the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.” Prior to Heller, the Court had affirmed only a collective right to own guns for military service, not an individual right. State and local governments are limited to the same extent as the federal government from infringing this right.