This is a Cato special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a landmark case that could reshape how courts treat the Second Amendment.

The key driving force behind the case is Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute,

is also an attorney representing plaintiffs in the case.

We spoke shortly after the court agreed to hear the case.

Well, this case is about the right of DC residents to be able to defend themselves in their own homes using ordinary garden variety of weapons.

D.C. law since 1976 has banned outright all handguns for all people not just mentally

crazy people not just felons not just seven-year-olds but everybody. And this case is not about carrying guns outside. It's not

about so-called assault weapons. It's about ordinary pistols in the home for self-defense. If you had a

pistol in 1976 when this handgun ban was implemented, DC law says you can't

carry that pistol from room to room without a permit and they haven't granted a permit in 31 years.

If you have a rifle or a shotgun, you can have it in your home but it has to be unloaded and it has to be either disassembled or trigger lock.

So in effect, no one in Washington, D.C.

can have a functional firearm in their own home for self-defense.

And we are seeking to reestablish that right.

The right exists under the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has agreed with us,

and we're hoping the Supreme Court will do so as well.

Why do you think the government of DC appealed this case? I think DC appealed the case

because they don't want to change their gun laws.

They were under some pressure from anti-gun groups and from other cities actually not to take this

case to the Supreme Court because the fear was that if DC lost that it would

have implications for other cities across the country, whereas if the DC government simply didn't seek Supreme Court review, the implications would probably

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