Heller, Bruen, and gun rights

What Heller, Bruen, and gun rights cases did not restore

Heller, Bruen, and gun rights litigation are about whether a law can be enforced. A person preparing an application is in a different lane: section 925(c) and the 2026 rule. Use the table, then read the opinion if the holding matters to a case.

Does a court case replace the application?

No. Section 922(g) is still in the code, and section 925(c) is still the application. A person who believes a statute is unconstitutional as applied to one conviction has a claim a lawyer can evaluate. The papers for the administrative application are in how to restore gun rights.

What to ask an attorney

Ask whether any of these cases is binding where a prosecution or a civil case would be heard, whether an as-applied claim is distinct from a 925(c) application, and what the risk of possessing a firearm is while a case is only an argument. This article does not rank those choices.

Second Amendment cases are often quoted as if they were restoration decisions. They are mostly decisions about whether a legislature may forbid a kind of weapon, a place of carry, or a category of people. Restoration is a different question: if a statute already disables a person, what process lifts that disability. The cases below matter because they describe the right and the limits courts have recognized. They do not grant relief under 18 U.S.C. 925(c).

Heller, and what it refused to decide

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, and that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home, and its requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock, violated that right. The plaintiff, Dick Heller, wanted to keep an operable handgun at home for self-defense. The Court agreed the Amendment covers that.

The majority also wrote a limit that later arguments sometimes skip. It said nothing in the opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or on laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. The Court called those presumptively lawful regulatory measures. A presumptive statement in an opinion is not a statute, and later cases have argued about how far it reaches. It is flatly inconsistent with the claim that Heller "gave felons their gun rights back." Heller did not order any restoration process, and it did not hold section 922(g)(1) unconstitutional.

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), held that the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller is fully applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Chicago's handgun ban fell for that reason. McDonald repeated that the right is not unlimited. Incorporation answers which governments are bound by the right. It does not answer whether a particular conviction still counts under section 921(a)(20), and it does not grant a 925(c) application.

Bruen's test

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual's right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home, and that New York's proper-cause requirement for a public-carry license violated that right. The Court rejected the means-end scrutiny that many courts of appeals had used after Heller. The test it stated asks whether the Amendment's plain text covers the conduct. If it does, the government must justify the regulation by showing that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Bruen is a method. It is not a catalog of who may be disarmed. Justice Alito's concurrence said the holding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm. Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence, joined by the Chief Justice, quoted Heller's language about presumptively lawful measures, including prohibitions on possession by felons. Those concurrences are not the majority's holding. They are part of why a careful reader does not treat Bruen as a restoration case. A court using Bruen's method may still uphold a disarmament law, as Rahimi later showed, or may find a particular application unconstitutional, as the Third Circuit did in Range. The method does not file a 925(c) application.

Rahimi: temporary disarmament after a judicial finding

United States v. Rahimi was decided on June 21, 2024. Zackey Rahimi was indicted under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8) while subject to a domestic-violence restraining order. He conceded the order met the statute. He argued the statute was unconstitutional on its face. The Fifth Circuit, applying Bruen, had agreed with him. The Supreme Court reversed.

The holding is narrow. The Court concluded that when an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. The Court looked to historical surety laws and to laws disarming people found to be dangerous, and it said section 922(g)(8) fits within that tradition as applied to a person who has had that judicial finding, for as long as the order lasts. The opinion says the Court was not undertaking an exhaustive historical analysis of the Amendment's full scope.

For restoration, Rahimi is a boundary marker. It accepts temporary disarmament tied to a court finding of dangerousness. It does not say a lifetime ban based on any conviction is valid, and it does not say such a ban is invalid. It does not mention section 925(c) as a remedy the Court was creating. The Department of Justice's later rule cites dangerousness as the statutory standard the Attorney General must apply. That standard was already in section 925(c). Rahimi did not write it.

Range: one person, one conviction, one circuit

Bryan Range pleaded guilty in 1995 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to making a false statement to obtain food stamps, in violation of 62 Pennsylvania Statutes section 481(a). The offense was a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years, which is why it was a crime punishable by more than one year under federal law and why the two-year misdemeanor exclusion in section 921(a)(20)(B) did not cover it. He was sentenced to three years of probation, paid restitution, and completed the sentence. In Range v. Attorney General, the Third Circuit held en banc in 2023 that the government had not shown a historical tradition of disarming him.

The government asked the Supreme Court to review that decision. While the petition was pending, the Court decided Rahimi. On July 2, 2024, in Garland v. Range, No. 23-374, the Court granted the petition, vacated the Third Circuit's judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of Rahimi. A vacatur means the 2023 opinion was no longer the final word. Citing only the 2023 opinion, without the remand, is a citation error.

The Third Circuit heard the case again and, on December 23, 2024, again ruled for Range. Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218 (3d Cir. 2024). The opinion says the decision is a narrow one. Range challenged section 922(g)(1) only as applied to him, given that Pennsylvania conviction. The court said the record contained no evidence that he poses a physical danger to others, and that the government had not shown a history and tradition of disarming people like him. The court ordered relief for Range, not for every person with a conviction.

Range is a court of appeals case. It binds the Third Circuit. It does not bind the rest of the country. Other circuits have rejected broad as-applied challenges to section 922(g)(1). This article does not collect those cases into a scoreboard, because a scoreboard goes stale and because a person is governed by the law of the circuit where a prosecution or a civil case would be heard, plus by the Supreme Court if it speaks. As of this article's date, the Supreme Court has not held section 922(g)(1) unconstitutional on its face or as applied to every nonviolent offense.

What the cases mean for someone preparing an application

They mean the constitutional background is active and unsettled at the edges. They do not mean a person can skip the statute. Section 922(g) is still in the code. Section 925(c) is still the application for relief from a federal disability. The 2026 rule even lists, among the facts the Attorney General may consider, whether failing to grant relief would infringe the applicant's Second Amendment rights. That consideration is inside an application. It is not a substitute for one.

A person who believes a statute is unconstitutional as applied to a particular conviction has a legal claim. A lawyer can evaluate it. A blog post cannot. Rights Restore does not file constitutional cases and does not tell a person that Range, or Heller, or any other case decides the person's record. The beta page is about organizing a packet, not about predicting a court.

The timeline places these decisions next to the statutes. The mistakes article lists the short false versions: that Heller ended the felon ban, that Bruen restored rights automatically, and that Range applies to every nonviolent conviction.