This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 30, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Robert A. Levy was the chief architect behind Heller v. District of Columbia, a case that has firmly established

the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to own firearms. The case also

struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handgun ownership.

We spoke Friday about the majority opinion, the impact on future

interpretations of the Miller decision.

What's next for gun rights litigation.

The litigation has been unfolding for five and a half years. It has been a protracted but interesting endeavor and we are very gratified that Justice Scalia and his four colleagues that join the 5- majority adopted I'd say many and perhaps

even most of the points that we have put forward in our briefs, our written briefs and our

oral argument.

And included among those are the point, the key point,

the threshold point that the Second Amendment does indeed

secure an individual right to keep and bear arms and that that right does not have to be

exercised solely within the context of malicious service. It extends to

self-defense, it extends to hunting to provide food for your family, and other purposes

as well.

Some of these purposes predated the United States Constitution, predated the United States

government.

They are part of our rights handed down under our common law tradition and indeed part of

our natural rights tradition.

So indeed they could not have dependent upon the existence of a militia for their application.

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