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From Theory To Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis Of The Right To Keep And Bear Arms After Heller, Eric Ruben, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

As a matter of constitutional doctrine, the right to keep and bear arms is coming of age. But although the doctrine has begun to mature in the decade since District of Columbia v. Heller, scholars, advocates, and judges disagree about (and sometimes simply do not know) how to characterize it.

This Article is the first comprehensive empirical analysis of post-Heller Second Amendment doctrine. Beginning with a set of more than one thousand Second Amendment challenges, we have coded every available Second Amendment opinion — state and federal, trial and appellate — from Heller up until February 1, 2016. The dataset …