Hi Rebecca,
No.
Although the Supreme Court has increasingly recognized Second Amendment rights over the past two decades, that trend is unlikely to produce a right to possess personal nuclear weapons.
To understand why, let’s look at how the court evaluates Second Amendment claims these days.
Start with the amendment’s text, which says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Despite the militia reference, the court said in 2008 that people have a personal right to possess firearms at home for self-defense, unrelated to militia service. Yet that 5-4 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller also emphasized that the right is not unlimited. Rather, it applies to weapons in “common use” for lawful purposes and doesn’t apply to “dangerous and unusual” weapons. The type of firearm at issue in the Heller case was a handgun, which the court called “the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home.”
Read the rest of Jordan’s answer here.
