Blocher co-authors study finding that Heller leaves room for substantial gun regulation
Professor Joseph Blocher and Eric Ruben, a fellow at NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, conducted a survey of every gun regulation decision in U.S. courts between 2008’s landmark Supreme Court decision in Heller vs. District of Columbia and February, 2016. They asked roughly 100 questions about each of the more than 1000 post-Heller lower court Second Amendment challenges, and found, among other things, that most challenges to existing gun regulations have failed. In a paper published in the Duke Law Journal, and in an article in Vox, Blocher and Ruben describe and analyze their findings and their relevance as the tenth anniversary of the Heller decision approaches and America continues to grapple with gun violence, polarized gun politics.
Read "The Second Amendment allows for more gun control than you think"
About Joseph Blocher
Professor Blocher's principal academic interests include federal and state constitutional law, the First and Second Amendments, legal history, and property. His current scholarship addresses issues of gun rights and regulation, free speech, sovereignty, and refugee law. Along with Professor Darrell Miller, Duke's Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law, Blocher established and oversees the Repository of Historical Gun Laws, a searchable database of gun laws from the medieval age to 1776 in England and from the colonial era to the middle of the twentieth century in the United States.
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