WASHINGTON -- For more than 30 years, the District of Columbia has had the nation's strictest gun-control law -- a ban on having handguns at home for self-defense.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to that law from those who say it violates the 2nd Amendment's right to keep and bear arms.

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FOR THE RECORD:
An earlier online version of this article was accompanied by a photo described as showing an illegal handgun held by a 14-year-old in southeast Washington, D.C. The Associated Press is checking on the authenticity of the gun shown.

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Few would cite D.C.'s gun ban as proof that gun control leads to crime control, as Washington continues to have one of the nation's highest rates of violent crime. Even some gun-control advocates don't support it.

The case has drawn wide attention not because of the district's law itself, but because the court may decide for the first time whether gun rights are truly protected by the Constitution, like the right to free speech and the right to freely practice one's religion.

If so, it could mark the beginning of new era in which judges around the country are called upon to decide whether the many restrictions and regulations of weapons infringe the rights protected by the 2nd Amendment.

"Whenever there is an individual right [protected by the Constitution], the burden is on the government to justify a limit on that right," said Robert A. Levy, a libertarian lawyer at the Cato Institute.

It isn't personal

An investment advisor who made a fortune and entered law school when he was 51, Levy has led the challenge to the D.C. gun ordinance, even though he lives in Florida and does not own a gun.

"I don't have a personal interest in guns or hunting. What fascinates me is the meaning of the Constitution," Levy said. He believes the 2nd Amendment should stand on the same footing as the 1st Amendment.

If the Supreme Court were to agree, the soft-spoken libertarian will have helped trigger a revolution in modern constitutional law.

The 1st Amendment's protection for free speech can be both powerful and controversial. Dissidents who burn the American flag in public are shielded from prosecution, the high court has ruled, despite state and federal laws that made flag-burning a crime.

By contrast, the justices have said remarkably little about the 2nd Amendment and have never used it to strike down a gun law. Often the court has turned away gun rights claims and upheld lower court decisions that treated the 2nd Amendment as protecting only a state's right to maintain a "well-regulated militia."

The amendment 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."

Dennis Henigan, a lawyer for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, says his group does not support a D.C.-style law. "We do not favor a ban on handguns or long guns," Henigan said.

But he worries about the effect of the court saying the 2nd Amendment should be viewed like the 1st Amendment. "This could be an invitation for the lower courts to actively scrutinize all the regulations and laws involving guns. That's our real concern," Henigan said.

There are registration rules and waiting periods for some gun purchases. The sale of new machine guns and some "assault rifles" are prohibited by federal or state laws. In some crimes, being caught with a gun -- for example, tucked under a car seat -- can add years to a prison term. Henigan foresees defense lawyers challenging these extra punishments as unconstitutional.

Opinion polls show that most Americans believe law-abiding people have a right to own a gun. Most state constitutions also protect gun rights.

And in recent decades, liberal scholars such as Harvard's Laurence H. Tribe and the University of Texas' Sanford Levinson have joined conservatives such as UCLA's Eugene Volokh in asserting that the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect an individual's right to have a gun.