The U.S. Supreme Court may well be having second thoughts about the sweep of D.C. v. Heller and the follow-up McDonald v. Chicago (2010). Nonetheless, Second Amendment zealots continue to insist that gun holders have an ineluctable constitutional right to bear any kind of weapon any place for self-defense purposes. The Wall Street Journal editorial, “Waiting for Justice Gorsuch,” on Feb. 24 is typical: “[Heller upholds] an individual right to bear arms explicitly for guns ‘in common use.’”

This misperception flies in the face of Justice Scalia’s several cautionary observations in effect limiting Heller to the specific issue there—namely the constitutional validity of an exceptionally strict local law that banned handgun possession in the home for self-defense. The Heller majority held that this sweeping prohibition flew in the face of the Second Amendment’s “core protection,” namely the “inherent right of self-defense” or “the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” But “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. That right [is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” For example, “presumptively lawful … long standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” pass constitutional muster, the court said. These examples were not “exhaustive”, but were consistent with long-standing, valid laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons.” There is no constitutional immunity for weapons not “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes” or “weapons that are most useful in military service,” the court said. “M-16 rifles and the like … may be banned.”

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