Judge Ricardo Urbina of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Friday that the Washington, D.C., firearm ordinances enacted after the Supreme Court’s D.C. v. Heller decision in 2008 “permissibly regulate the exercise of the core Second Amendment right to use firearms for the purpose of self-defense in the home.” Urbina dismissed a case brought by Dick Heller, the same plaintiff who challenged the previous D.C. ordinance in the Supreme Court.
Heller challenged the District’s firearms registration process, its ban on assault weapons and its prohibition of “large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” claiming they violated the Second Amendment. In analyzing the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, Urbina said the Second Amendment right to bear arms “is not unlimited.” He cited Justice Antonin Scalia’s admonition that the Court’s decision, while declaring an individual right to bear arms, did not “cast doubt” on a range of firearms regulations. Urbina said he was applying “intermediate scrutiny” to D.C.’s new ordinances, and under that standard, he concluded the regulations were permissible because they serve the District’s “important governmental interest” in public safety.
