The courts have been reluctant to expand upon Heller, allowing various restrictions to remain in place. As with all rights, the Second Amendment right to own a firearm is not absolute. The Heller Court, for example, admonished lower courts to not infer the ruling hostile to restrictions with regard to the mentally ill, convicted felons, or undocumented immigrants.
To date there stands numerous restrictions considered Constitutionally questionable, such as waiting periods, restrictions on the number of handguns purchased during a given time period, training requirements, and permit and licensing statutes.
As with Heller, McDonald has done little to change the regulatory landscape concerning firearms: local jurisdictions may enact gun control policy however they see fit provided such policy not manifest in an outright ban. Indeed, in the District of Columbia and Chicago, some critics charge that the convoluted, Byzantine, and capricious policies in place in both cities constitute a de facto ban on handguns.
Given the fact, therefore, that little has changed in the post Heller/McDonald realm of firearm regulatory policy, its clear that the tragedies weve witnessed in Aurora, Co, as with the shootings in Tucson, have nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with our inability or unwillingness to address the problems associated with mental health in a proactive, comprehensive manner.
The fact remains that gun control policies simply dont work, in addition to being constitutionally problematic.
Aurora and similar events are a mental health, public policy issue there are no quick fix solutions, and effective solutions will likely never be realized as a consequence of partisan bickering and obstructionism.
