At this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference, hosted by the Second Amendment Foundation, in Dallas, I heard District of Columbia v. Heller, McDonald v. City of Chicago, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen described as the “holy trinity” of Second Amendment law. The phrase stuck because it perfectly captures how the three decisions work together.
Heller identified the right. McDonald applied it nationwide. Bruen gave courts the test required to enforce it.
For most of the twentieth century, gun-control advocates treated the Second Amendment as though it were a constitutional artifact—words preserved in the Bill of Rights but denied their ordinary meaning whenever an American entered a courtroom. Three Supreme Court decisions broke that fiction.
District of Columbia v. Heller established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. McDonald v. City of Chicago held that the right binds state and local governments, not merely Washington, D.C., and the federal government. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen confirmed that the right extends beyond the home and ordered courts to judge gun laws by the Constitution’s text and the nation’s historical tradition, not by a judge’s opinion of whether gun control is useful.
Together, Heller, McDonald, and Bruen form the holy trinity of modern Second Amendment jurisprudence. One identified the right. One applied it nationwide. One gave it an enforceable test.
Heller: The Second Amendment Protects an Individual Right
Restoration of the Second Amendment began on June 26, 2008.
Dick Heller was a D.C. special police officer who could carry a handgun while working at a federal building but was denied permission to keep one functional in his own home. At the time, the District of Columbia effectively banned handgun possession and required other firearms in the home to be kept unloaded and disassembled or secured by a trigger lock.
In a 5–4 opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court held that those restrictions violated the Second Amendment.
The Court’s central conclusion was unmistakable: the Second Amendment protects “an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia” and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home.
That holding demolished the gun-control movement’s preferred “collective right” theory. The phrase “the right of the people” means what it means elsewhere in the Bill of Rights: a right belonging to individual Americans. The prefatory reference to a well-regulated militia announces a purpose; it does not erase or narrow the operative command that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Heller also recognized self-defense as the central component of the right and handguns as protected arms. The government could not prohibit an entire class of arms overwhelmingly chosen by Americans for lawful defense.
The decision further explained that the Second Amendment extends to arms “in common use” for lawful purposes. That principle remains central to challenges against bans on popular semiautomatic rifles, standard-capacity magazines, and other arms owned by millions of peaceable Americans.
Gun-control lawyers routinely seize on Heller’s statement that the right is “not unlimited.” That sentence is not a blank check for every restriction lawmakers can invent. Heller rejected interest balancing and declared that the Second Amendment itself is the result of the people’s decision to place the right above ordinary legislative preferences. The government does not get to balance an enumerated right away by repeating the words “public safety.”
Most importantly, the Court did not create a right in Heller. The Second Amendment codified a pre-existing right. Heller merely forced the judiciary to acknowledge what the Constitution had said since 1791.
Read the Supreme Court’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller.
McDonald: The Right Binds Every Level of Government
Heller answered whether the federal government and the District of Columbia could disarm Americans. It left an immediate practical question: Could a state or city do what D.C. could not? Chicago attempted exactly that.
Otis McDonald was a 76-year-old Army veteran who lived in a crime-plagued Chicago neighborhood and wanted a handgun to defend himself and his home. Chicago’s handgun-registration system made lawful handgun possession effectively impossible for ordinary residents.
On June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court answered in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Again by a 5–4 vote, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right “fully applicable to the States.”
Justice Samuel Alito’s controlling opinion concluded that the right recognized in Heller is fundamental to the nation’s scheme of ordered liberty and deeply rooted in American history and tradition. The plurality applied it to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
Justice Clarence Thomas supplied the decisive fifth vote but argued for a more textually faithful route: the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause. His historical examination focused heavily on Reconstruction, when freedmen were routinely disarmed and left defenseless against private violence and hostile governments.
The right to keep and bear arms was never an indulgence reserved for the politically connected. It was understood as essential to citizenship, personal security, and the ability of Americans, especially those whom government failed or refused to protect, to defend themselves.
McDonald transformed Heller from a ruling aimed principally at federal power into a nationwide command. California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, and every city and county within them are bound by the same Second Amendment as Congress and the District of Columbia. There is no watered-down state version of the right.
Without McDonald, the most aggressive state and local gun-control regimes would argue that Heller did not reach them. With McDonald, every level of American government must answer to the Second Amendment.
Read the Supreme Court’s opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago.
Bruen: The Right Leaves the Front Door
After Heller and McDonald, lower courts adopted a two-step test that paid lip service to history before applying “intermediate scrutiny.” In practice, that second step allowed judges to uphold gun laws whenever the government claimed an important objective and offered studies, speculation, or legislative findings to support it.
The right existed on paper, but courts repeatedly deferred to the same governments accused of violating it. Bruen ended interest balancing.
New York required an applicant to prove “proper cause” before the state would issue an unrestricted license to carry a handgun in public. Ordinary citizens could not receive permission merely because they wished to carry a firearm for self-defense. They had to convince a government official that they faced a special danger beyond that confronting the general public.
On June 23, 2022, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s discretionary regime in a 6–3 opinion written by Justice Thomas. The Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry a handgun publicly for self-defense. The Constitution does not confine “bear Arms” to one’s living room.
Just as important, Bruen rejected the lower courts’ two-step framework as “one step too many.” The Court announced the governing rule:
When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its restriction by proving that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
That burden belongs to the government, not the citizen.
Judges may no longer ask whether a modern gun restriction seems sensible, whether lawmakers called it necessary, or whether the asserted public benefit outweighs the burden on armed citizens. The people completed that interest balancing when they adopted the Second Amendment.
Nor may the government satisfy Bruen by finding one obscure outlier law or by pointing to restrictions adopted long after the relevant constitutional period. History must reveal a genuine American tradition of comparable regulation. When an unprecedented modern law addresses a social concern that existed at the Founding but the Founding generation did not impose a comparable restriction, that absence is powerful evidence against the law.
Bruen did not prohibit objective “shall-issue” licensing systems, but it warned that licensing rules can still be unconstitutional when officials use exorbitant fees or lengthy delays to deny ordinary citizens the right to carry.
Read the Supreme Court’s opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
How Heller, McDonald, and Bruen Work Together
The three decisions are strongest when understood as one constitutional structure:
Heller identifies the right: Individual Americans possess the right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, with self-defense at its core.
McDonald identifies who must obey it: Federal, state, and local governments are all bound by the Second Amendment.
Bruen identifies how courts must enforce it: Protected conduct is presumed constitutional, and the government must prove that its restriction fits this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Remove any one of the three and the protection becomes incomplete. Heller without McDonald would leave state and local governments room to disarm their citizens. Heller and McDonald without Bruen would leave hostile judges free to balance the right into irrelevance. Bruen rests on the individual right and incorporation established by the cases before it.
Later Supreme Court decisions have discussed how historical analogues should be evaluated. They have not displaced this foundation. A historical analogue need not be a dead ringer for a modern law, but the government still must establish a relevant historical tradition. Policy preferences and judicial deference remain insufficient. The historical record, not a judge’s policy preference, remains the proper guide.
AmmoLand has repeatedly documented lower courts’ attempts to dilute Bruen, revive interest balancing under new names, or accept historical substitutes that would never survive serious scrutiny. That resistance shows that anti-gun states will continue to dismiss rulings from the Supreme Court.
The Second Amendment Is Not a Second-Class Right
The Constitution does not grant Americans the right to keep and bear arms. It recognizes and protects a right that predated the document itself. The final words, “shall not be infringed,” are a command to the government, not a suggestion.
As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently said on a podcast, the Second Amendment assumes the people have the right to bear arms; it does not grant it.
Heller, McDonald, and Bruen did not deliver everything Second Amendment absolutists seek. Courts still tolerate laws that cannot be reconciled with the Amendment’s plain language, and governments continue testing how much resistance or delay they can place between citizens and their rights.
But these three cases changed the legal battlefield.
The right belongs to the individual. It binds every level of government. It applies inside and outside the home. When the right’s text covers the conduct, the government—not the citizen—must justify an infringement through the nation’s historical tradition.
That is the holy trinity of Second Amendment jurisprudence, and every gun owner should understand it.
Clarence Thomas: The Second Amendment Assumes a Right—It Does Not Grant One
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
