It's hard to believe that it's been 18 years since the Heller decision came down, ending the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and explicitly declaring that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, unconnected to service in a militia.
So what's changed since 2008? Law professor Josh Blackman says "not much," at least in places like Washington, D.C. and other anti-gun locales.
Over at Reason, Blackman writes that "the impact of Heller pales in comparison with the two decade run after other landmark cases."
Even where there is "shall issue" conceal carry, virtually every public place is off limits, making it difficult to actually carry. States have imposed burdensome registration and licensing schemes, making simply keeping a firearm a hassle. And to date, the Court has seemed more interested in letting pot users own guns than deciding which arms and accessories are protected by the Second Amendment.
I think every Second Amendment advocate would prefer that the Court move faster on 2A issues, but it's odd to me that Blackman complains about the Supreme Court taking up an issue like Section 922(g)(3) and "letting" pot users own guns while at the same time arguing that the Court's " biggest decisions... invalidated handgun bans that were virtually non-existent across the country."
Well, 922(g)(3) serves as a handgun ban on millions of Americans, so in that sense Hemani will have a much bigger impact. But we wouldn't have Hemani without Heller and McDonald.
And without Bruen, blue state residents would still be in a position where they couldn't get a license to carry, so it didn't really matter how many "gun-free zones" there were. I think it's despicable that in states like New York, Maryland, California, and Hawaii, lawmakers responded to Bruen by deciding if they couldn't ban most people from carrying guns, then they could ban lawful carry in most places. That, however, is a fairly recent phenomenon, and the Court has started to address the issue with its decision striking down Hawaii's "vampire rule" in Wolford this year.
Even with those restrictions in place, there are hundreds of thousands of people in New Jersey who now possess a carry license, compared to a few thousand before Bruen. Maryland's concealed carry numbers jumped 400 percent in the first year after Bruen came down. Even in places like Honolulu and San Francisco, where virtually no concealed carry permits had been issued, there are thousands of people who are lawfully bearing arms wherever they can.
Blackman says those are incremental victories at best, and predicts that in Hawaii "businesses will gladly post signs to exclude gun owners" if the government can't do it for them. If he's right about that, then it's because legal victories can only take us so far. We still have to change the culture in blue states that treats gun ownership as a scourge on society, and that takes both time and genuine effort.
In his column, Blackman begins by pointing out that Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954. How much of an impact did Brown have on racial segregation in the United States over the next two decades, he wonders?
The answer is "not much," at least not directly. The Supreme Court imposed no deadline on schools to integrate. Instead, it instructed districts to do so "with all deliberate speed."
Many school districts delayed integrating for as long as they could, and in Virginia a campaign of "massive resistance" took place that led to public schools closing in Prince Edward County for a full five years, from 1960 until 1965. It took more than a decade for Brown to truly take root, and multiple decisions by the Supreme Court to compel states to comply. In fact, Brown I was followed by Brown II in 1965 and Brown III in 1978, almost 24 years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools violate the constitution.
The fight for our Second Amendment rights is the fight for civil rights, and just as we saw in the 1950s and 1960s, those who are compelled by judicial decisions to recognize a right they don't believe in will put up a struggle. This struggle is taking place today in the form of "gun-free zones," bans on AR-15s and other commonly owned arms, draconian licensing laws, waiting periods, and other mandates that are meant to chill the exercise of our right to keep and bear arms.
Could the Supreme Court be doing more? Absolutely. Has there been genuine progress, even in blue states, since 2008? Undeniably so. Is there more to be done outside of the courtroom? You'd better believe it. Politics is downstream from culture, but we're making progress there as well.
Between 2021 to 2024, more than 11 million Americans became gun owners, according to a study from Harvard's Injury Control Research Center. 46 percent were women, 20 percent were black, and another 20 percent were Hispanic; all demographics that have broadly supported gun control in the past (or at least since the 1960s). As more Americans of all races, colors, and creeds embrace their Second Amendment rights, we have an opportunity to create new Second Amendment advocates and activists.
I'm not trying to sugarcoat things. Blackman is right that SCOTUS needs to be "vigorously enforcing cases that actually enable gun owners to exercise their right to keep and bear arms." But I covered 2A issues for years before the Heller decision was released, and I think we've seen undeniable progress, even in blue states, in the 18 years since.
