Firearms

SIGNIFICANCE: Most US states permit private owners of most types of firearms; however, increasing numbers of states and some cities have started prohibiting certain types of firearms.

Throughout US history, private ownership of most types of firearms has been legal. Since the last decades of the twentieth century, however, there have been increasing challenges to private gun ownership. By the 2020s, a significant number of states and cities had enacted laws prohibiting possession of certain types of firearms.

Classifications of Firearms

Throughout the United States, it is lawful to own rifles and shotguns. The former have barrels with twisting grooves (the rifling) that make their bullets spin, thereby imparting greater stability and accuracy in their trajectories. In contrast, ordinary shotguns are smooth-bored weapons that fire bunches of small lead pellets (shot), which are held in plastic shells, with gunpowder and primers, until they are fired. Ordinary rifles and shotguns are the firearms most commonly used by hunters, whose activities are considered a form of sport.

Handguns are legal everywhere in the United States. In 2024, forty-six states allowed adults to carry handguns in public, although in many cases, they must pass background checks and complete safety training classes to obtain permits to carry handguns in public for protection. Many restrictions that have been placed on handgun ownership have generally been enacted by municipal governments. For example, in 1976, Washington, DC, banned acquisition of new handguns. Chicago did the same in 1982. However, both cities allowed residents who already owned registered handguns to keep them. During the 1970s and 1980s, several Chicago suburbs also enacted bans, all of which applied retroactively to handguns already possessed by residents. Several other Illinois towns have banned handgun sales but not handgun possession.

In 2008, the US Supreme Court overturned the DC laws that banned handgun ownership and required previously acquired handguns in the home to be locked or disassembled in District of Columbia v. Heller. With a 5–4 majority, the Supreme Court found the DC ban on registering handguns to be in violation of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the Second Amendment does not curtail the power of state legislatures to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of guns.

The Debate over Gun Ownership

Most challenges to municipal bans on handgun ownership have been based on the Second Amendment, which states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” A challenge to a San Francisco handgun prohibition also succeeded in 1982. In that case, however, a court struck down the city’s ordinance because it conflicted with a state law explicitly forbidding local governments from banning guns.

Advocates of handgun prohibition point out that while handguns constitute only about one-third of all guns in the United States, they are involved in a greatly disproportionate share of crimes that involve firearms. They also note that because handguns are small and easily concealed, they are easier for criminals to carry. Gun law advocates argue that the banned handguns are worthless for sports or self-defense, are dangerous to the user, and are preferred by criminals. Prohibition opponents contest all these claims and note that the prohibitions always include exemptions for police, which implies that the guns can, in fact, be used for self-defense.

Opponents of prohibition argue that if handguns were banned, many criminals would simply use hacksaws to shorten the barrels of rifles and shotguns. Then, because rifles and shotguns are more powerful weapons, the number of deaths from firearms might increase. Prohibition opponents also argue that because handguns are portable and concealable, they are the best guns for carrying in public for self-defense.

There have also been efforts to ban rifles that fire the comparatively large .50 caliber bullets. However, by 2024, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia were the only states to ban such rifles. Supporters of such legislation emphasize that the power and long-distance capability of .50 caliber rifles are inherently dangerous. Prohibition opponents argue that .50 caliber rifle shooting is an expensive hobby whose participants are no threat to anyone. They also contend that gun-control laws should concentrate on disarming dangerous people, rather than ban particular models of guns.

Federal Laws

There is no federal ban on small gun ownership, but the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 gave the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives the authority to prohibit importation of guns that were not suited for sporting purposes. The bureau used this authority to halt the importation of inexpensive foreign handguns. During the 1970s, legislation to ban Saturday night specials received a great deal of attention in Congress, but no bill was passed. One bill would have banned two-thirds of all handguns; another would have banned 90 percent of all handguns by classifying them as Saturday night specials.

In 1988, Congress responded to new developments in plastic firearm technology by passing legislation requiring that all guns include at least 3.7 ounces of metal and that the guns’ metal must show recognizable gun profiles with the Undetectable Firearms Act. The legislation was intended to prevent the invention of guns that could be sneaked through metal detectors and X-ray machines. The legislation did not affect any guns then in existence, including the Glock pistol. Congress reauthorized the law in 2013; attempts to strengthen to law by requiring the sellers of plastic guns to include a metal piece that cannot be removed failed.

During the 1980s, the Glock Company began using plastic polymers for the frames of its handguns. The plastic frames made the guns more durable and lighter in weight and thus more suitable for frequent carrying. During the 1990s, many other manufacturers started making plastic frames. By the early twenty-first century, plastic frames were common in new handgun design and were also appearing in some long guns. In the 2010s, the manufacture of plastic guns became possible with 3-D printing technology. The research-and-development firm Defense Distributed posted the schematics for a 3-D printed plastic handgun online in 2013, but the federal government ordered the company to take the blueprints offline.

Automatic and Semiautomatic Firearms

Automatic guns are models that fire continuously, as their triggers are pressed. These guns are also commonly known as machine guns. In 1934, Congress responded to the criminal violence that had surged during Prohibition by passing the National Firearms Act (NFA). That law required owners of automatic guns to pay one-time federal taxes of two hundred dollars on their guns and to register them. The law also imposed a similar requirement on short-barreled rifles and shotguns.

In 1986, Congress outlawed the manufacture of new automatic firearms for the nongovernment market. The law allowed owners to keep the estimated 200,000 automatic guns then in private hands. Those guns could also be bought and sold, pursuant to the registration and tax requirements.

In 2024, thirteen states— California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin—and the District of Columbia, did not allow private ownership of automatic firearms. California required permits that were considered nearly impossible to obtain, except by film producers. In all other states, possession of automatic firearms remained lawful, within the bounds of the National Firearms Act.

Semiautomatic firearms are guns that automatically reload as each round is fired. Energy from each round’s gunpowder explosions is used to move the next round into the firing chamber. Users of semiautomatic weapons do not have to perform additional actions, such as operating a lever or pump, to place the next round in firing position. However, unlike automatic guns, semiautomatic guns fire only one round at a time when their triggers are pressed. All semiautomatics fire at essentially the same rate.

In the United States, the term “assault weapon” is usually applied to semiautomatic firearms. No federal ban in the United States applies to every semiautomatic. In countries such as Germany and Australia, however, all semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are prohibited. Germany also prohibits pump-action guns.

American lawmakers who wish to ban semiautomatics have often faced a difficult task in defining exactly what is to be prohibited. Some assault weapon prohibitions are simply lists of specific gun models. Other prohibitions look to the design history of the guns. Still others are based on the presence or absence of certain accessories, such as folding stocks, forward pistol grips, flash suppressors, or grenade launchers.

A federal prohibition on the manufacture of new assault weapons was enacted under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, but expired in September 2004. Two decades later, ten states and and Washington, D.C., had bans on assault weapons that were unaffected by the expiration of the federal law. States with laws banning certain assault weapons include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York. A ban on “assault pistols” that does not apply to rifles or shotguns is enforced in Hawaii. All these state bans had grandfather clauses that allow existing owners of the banned guns to keep them, provided the guns are properly registered. Some cities have enacted local bans.

Almost all semiautomatic handguns, as well as many semiautomatic rifles, store their ammunition in rectangular magazines that can be replaced within seconds. Assault weapon laws often include restrictions on the permissible sizes of detachable magazines. Gun-control advocates have proposed limits of six rounds of ammunition. The 1994 federal law had outlawed manufacture of magazines holding more than ten rounds. Some state and local laws have limits of fifteen to twenty rounds.

Prohibition advocates argue that the banned guns are of no value except for killing many people quickly. Prohibition opponents argue that the guns are useful for all sporting purposes, and in particular that some of the banned rifles are used in elite target-shooting competitions. They also contend that the guns are useful for lawful defense—especially since assault weapon laws always allow the police to possess such guns, and the only purpose of police gun possession is for lawful defense.

There have been renewed attempts to ban semiautomatic firearms following mass shootings involving semiautomatic assault weapons, such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, when a gunman used a semiautomatic rifle to fatally shoot twenty children under the age of eight as well as six adults, and the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, in which a gunman killed forty-nine people and injured fifty-three others—the deadliest mass shooting in US history. Following the Sandy Hook shooting, Connecticut and New York enacted statewide bans on certain semiautomatic rifles and magazines that hold ten or more bullets in 2013. These state bans have faced a number of legal challenges; in October 2015, the Second Circuit upheld both laws, holding that the dangers posed by such weapons "are manifest and incontrovertible," and the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal that sought to overturn Connecticut's ban in June 2016.

Bibliography

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