The District of Columbia is asking the Supreme Court to preserve the capital's ban on handguns in a major case over the meaning of the Second Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms."

A Washington resident who wants to keep handguns at home for protection is challenging the 32-year-old ban as a violation of his constitutional rights. A federal appeals court in Washington agreed that the city cannot ban handguns.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday morning in perhaps the most closely watched case of the term. The justices also were to hand down opinions in previously argued cases.

The guns case included 68 briefs from outside groups, most opposed to the ban.

Hundreds of people waited, some since Sunday, for a chance to watch the proceedings.

"I'm hopeful that reasoned minds will prevail," Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., said outside the court Tuesday morning. He authored a brief supporting the District.

Paul Dembowski, 40, a musician from Annapolis, Md., said the Bill of Rights generally protects individuals' rights.

"It's a matter of civil liberties. You can't take just one part of the Bill of Rights and not another," Dembowksi said.

Washington resident Amy Miller, 32, disagreed with the idea that she and her neighbors would be safer if they could have guns at home. "I don't think we need more handguns in Washington, D.C.," Miller said.

The court planned to release audio recordings of the arguments as soon as they conclude.

The court has not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment in the 216 years since its ratification. The basic issue for the justices is whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Even if the court determines there is an individual right, the justices still will have to decide whether the District's ban can stand and how to evaluate other gun control laws. This issue has caused division within the Bush administration, with Vice President Dick Cheney taking a harder line than the administration's official position at the court.

The local Washington government argues that its law should be allowed to remain in force whether or not the amendment applies to individuals, although it reads the amendment as intended to allow states to have armed forces.

The City Council that adopted the ban said it was justified because "handguns have no legitimate use in the purely urban environment of the District of Columbia."

Dick Anthony Heller, 65, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection. His lawyers say the amendment plainly protects an individual's right.

The 27 words and three enigmatic commas of the Second Amendment have been analyzed again and again by legal scholars, but hardly at all by the Supreme Court.

The amendment reads: "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."

The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that case means but agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.

Chief Justice John Roberts said at his confirmation hearing that the correct reading of the Second Amendment was "still very much an open issue."