A note for listeners, on and across this season, there are repeated mentions of guns, gun violence, and their collective toll on our society and our psyche.

Please take care while you listen.

I think I may be the only attorney you've ever met where 100% of the cases I've ever litigated

have been victories in the Supreme Court.

Of course I don't tell anybody that the number of

cases I've litigated is only one. This is Robert Levy. That one case he litigated is

perhaps the most significant turning point in the history of the American

gun debate and the Second Amendment.

It's known as D.C. versus Heller.

The case started in 2002.

Washington, D.C. had a long-standing ban on handguns.

You couldn't have a handgun at all,

you could have a long gun, a rifle or a shotgun, but you haven't have it either, disassembled or trigger locked.

So unless she intended to club somebody over the head with it, it wasn't going to be useful

as it needs of self-defense.

Levy was invited to join the legal team planning a lawsuit against the district challenging

the handgun ban.

At first glance, he was perhaps an odd fit.

Levy doesn't consider himself a gun rights proponent. He says he's not

particularly interested in guns. I was animated by the violation of the Constitution

by Washington DC D.C.

At the time, Levy was a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute,

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