In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), the Supreme Court struck down on Second Amendment grounds a local law banning possession of handguns and requiring D.C. residents to maintain their lawfully owned firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or other device unless the handguns are located in the residents' places of business or being used for lawful recreational purposes. After engaging in an exhaustive discussion of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, which it noted is not without limitations, the Supreme Court acknowledged its awareness of the problem of handgun violence facing the District and proposed that other regulatory means were available to the District to combat the problem. The United States Supreme Court determined that "the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms," and that an individual can use a firearm for the traditionally lawful means of self-defense within the home. In its decision, the Supreme Court struck down a local government ordinance totally banning hand gun possession, even in one's home. The Court described the ordinance thus: "few laws in the history of our nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District's handgun ban." (Id at 2818.) The decision, however, reiterated that restrictions on weapons possession may be imposed by a government, including prohibitions imposed against carrying firearms in "sensitive places." (Id at 2816-17.) The Court added that "we identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive." (Id at 2817 n. 26.) The Court evaluated the meaning of the Second Amendment, and concluded the constitutional right to possess firearms was not limited to possession for military use and included an individual's right to possess firearms in the home for self-defense. (Heller, supra, 554 U.S. at pp. 571-574, 591, 634-636.) But the court stated, "like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." (Id. at p. 626 (maj. opn. of Scalia, J.).) The right does not extend to any sort of confrontation nor does it extend to any type of weapon. (Id. at pp. 595, 625-626.) Rather, it is a right to possess and carry weapons "typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes." (Id. at p. 625.) The court specifically noted that "nothing in its opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places . . . ." (Id. at pp. 626-627.) The court further explicitly recognized "the problem of handgun violence in this country," and confirmed that the "Constitution leaves . . . a variety of tools for combating that problem . . . ." (Id. at p. 636.) The Supreme Court declared unconstitutional, on Second Amendment grounds, legislation in the District of Columbia that basically prohibited the possession of usable handguns in the home (requiring firearms lawfully retained in the home to be rendered inoperable through the use of a trigger lock mechanism and prohibiting rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense). (See Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783 at pp. 2817-2818.) The court ruled that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to possession of a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use of the weapon for self-defense in the home. However, Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, explained, "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited . . . . Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." (Id. at pp. 2816-2817.) The court further noted, "We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive." (Id. at 2817, fn. 26.) Indeed, Justice Breyer, in discussing the appropriate standard of constitutional scrutiny to be applied in the challenge of the District of Columba statute, recognized that "the majority implicitly, and appropriately, rejects that suggestion by broadly approving a set of laws--prohibitions on concealed weapons, forfeiture by criminals of the Second Amendment right, prohibitions on firearms in certain locales, and governmental regulation of commercial firearm sales--whose constitutionality under a strict scrutiny standard would be far from clear." (Id. at p. 2851 (dis. opn. of Breyer, J).) The Court thus expressly recognized that certain individuals may be deemed too dangerous to permit them to possess firearms, and permits governmental restrictions on their possession of firearms without running afoul of the Second Amendment's guarantee of the personal right to bear arms. While section 12021, subdivision (c)(1) prohibits such possession by individuals who have suffered a prior conviction of certain enumerated misdemeanors (such as defendant's prior conviction of a violent misdemeanor--assault with a deadly weapon), that prohibition is still within the ambit of constitutionally permissible control over firearm possession recognized in Heller.