Eric Ruben and Joseph Blocher’s empirical investigation makes a major contribution to scholarship by providing a wealth of data about post-District of Columbia v. Heller Second Amendment litigation. The article’s many tables of interesting data deserve praise. The article’s only major weakness, in my view, is a repeated assertion that is not supported by and is in fact inconsistent with the data.

Ruben and Blocher contend that the Second Amendment is not being underenforced by lower courts. They even defend the federal circuits that are most commonly charged with underenforcement: the Second, Fourth, and Ninth. The data in the article are inadequate to support a conclusion that the Second Amendment is being fully enforced. Indeed, looking at the actual, final results of major cases reveals a serious problem of underenforcement in some jurisdictions. For example, in some circuits, the right to bear arms is not merely underenforced; the right is nullified.