Last month’s terrorist attack on civilians in Paris rekindled discussion about federal gun-control legislation, including the possibility of barring people on a federal terrorist watch list from buying weapons. The assault-weapon attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado last week has further energized public debate about weapons in our society and efforts to regulate or ban them, while Wednesday’s mass-shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., is sure to add fuel to the fire.

Against the backdrop of these incidents and what seems like an endless stream of gun-fueled violence, the courts have been grappling with a wave of legal challenges being brought by gun-rights activists emboldened by two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that breathed life into the long-dormant Second Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had issued several significant rulings before this year, but a decision it issued six weeks ago is its most important to date in terms of developing the Second Amendment standards that will govern gun-control regulations until the Supreme Court wades back into this contentious area. This recent ruling is also significant in its treatment of a subject of intense interest to civil libertarians: the relationship between the Second Amendment and other provisions of the Bill of Rights.

A Brief Background

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