Split DC Circuit panel issues important Second Amendment ruling in via Heller II

The DC Circuit has another big Second Amendment ruling in the Heller case today in Heller v. DC, No. No. 10-703 (DC Cir. Oct. 4, 2011) (available here).   Here is how the majority opinion (per Judge Ginsburg) gets started: 

In June 2008 the Supreme Court held the District of Columbia laws restricting the possession of firearms in one’s home violated the Second Amendment right of individuals to keep and bear arms.   See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570. In the wake of that decision, the District adopted the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008 (FRA), D.C. Law 17-372, which amended the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, D.C. Law 1-85.  The plaintiffs in the present case challenge, both facially and as applied to them, the provisions of the District’s gun laws, new and old, requiring the registration of firearms and prohibiting both the registration of “assault weapons” and the possession of magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds of ammunition. The plaintiffs argue those provisions (1) are not within the District’s congressionally delegated legislative authority or, if they are, then they (2) violate the Second Amendment.

The district court granted summary judgment for the District and the plaintiffs appealed. We hold the District had the authority under D.C. law to promulgate the challenged gun laws, and we uphold as constitutional the prohibitions of assault weapons and of large-capacity magazines and some of the registration requirements.   We remand the other registration requirements to the district court for further proceedings because the record is insufficient to inform our resolution of the important constitutional issues presented.

Here is part of the start of the very lengthy dissent by Judge Kavanaugh:

In this case, we are called upon to assess those provisions of D.C.’s law under Heller.  In so doing, we are of course aware of the longstanding problem of gun violence in the District of Columbia.  In part for that reason, Heller has engendered substantial controversy.  See, e.g., J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law, 95 VA. L. REV. 253 (2009); Richard A. Posner, In Defense of Looseness, THE NEW REPUBLIC, Aug. 27, 2008, at 32.  As a lower court, however, it is not our role to re-litigate Heller or to bend it in any particular direction.  Our sole job is to faithfully apply Heller and the approach it set forth for analyzing gun bans and regulations.

In my judgment, both D.C.’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its gun registration requirement are unconstitutional under Heller.