The Clear Intent of the Framers

The Framers Clearly Intended That The Second Amendment Guarantee An Individual Right To Keep And Bear Arms.

?The founding generation certainly viewed bearing arms as an individual right based upon both English common law and natural law, a right logically linked to the natural right of self-defense.? Kasler v. Lockyer, 23 Cal.4th 472, 505 (2000) (Brown, J., concurring). ?[T]he history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training.? Emerson, 270 F.3d at 260.

After the Constitution was submitted for ratification in 1787, its Antifederalist opponents charged that the vast powers granted the federal government over military affairs would allow Congress to  destroy the militia through neglect or deliberate action, replacing it with a standing army designed to oppress the people. John Dewitt captured a key Anti-federalist fear when he predicted that, using its authority over the militia and its power to ?To raise and support Armies,? U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 8, cl. 12, Congress ?may arm or disarm all or any part of the freemen of the United States, so that when their army is sufficiently numerous, they may put it out of the power of the freemen militia of America to assert and defend their liberties?.? The Antifederalist Papers, 75 (M. Borden, ed. 1965).

The responses to such fears offered in the Federalist Papers show two things: (1) the Federalists, like the Anti-federalists, viewed the militia as consisting of all male citizens capable of bearing arms; and (2) the Federalists believed that widespread individual ownership of firearms would prevent the militia from being overpowered by any standing army, should the federal government ever become oppressive. Thus, in Federalist 29, Hamilton writes:

[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to  the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to  defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens. The Federalist No. 29, at 145 (Alexander Hamilton) (G. Carey, J. McClellan eds. 1990).

In Federalist 46, Madison echoed Hamilton?s argument by pointing to ?the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation,? and contrasting this situation with that of Europe, where ?the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.? The Federalist No. 46, 244 (James Madison) (G. Carey, J. McClellan eds. 1990). In America, any threat represented by a standing army would find its counterweight in ?a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands?? Id.

Unwilling to accept the Federalists? assurance that the proposed Constitution contained no power that would allow the federal government to oppress the people, the Anti-federalists continued to oppose  its adoption without, at a minimum, specific protections for individual rights. Due to their influence, five of the states that ratified the Constitution also sent demands for a Bill of Rights to Congress. All five demanded protection for the right to bear arms; and all five made plain that the right to be protected belonged to individuals, not state governments. New Hampshire?s proposal provided that ?Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion,? language that unmistakably protects individual rights quite apart from any militia service. 1 Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 326 (2d ed., 1836). Virginia?s proposal, which served as a model for Madison?s draft, provided ?That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free State.? 3 Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 658 (2 ed., nd 1836). Thus, the language proposed by Virginia sets out the individual right and the preference for a militia in two unambiguously independent phrases, while at the same time making clear that the ?militia? and the ?people? are one and the same.

Having secured the Constitution?s ratification, the Federalists were nonetheless mindful of the reservations with which the Constitution was ratified and the popular desire for a written declaration of rights. In his first inaugural address, President Washington signaled that a Bill of Rights might well be desirable, and would pose no threat to the young Constitution. Emerson, 270 F.3d at 244 (quoting President Washington, Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789) (citation omitted).

Accordingly, on June 8, 1789, then-Congressman James Madison proposed several amendments to the Constitution ? including one that provided in pertinent part that ?The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country . . . .? That the amendment was designed to  secure a personal right of the citizen rather than a collective right of the states is clear from Madison?s notes for the speech introducing the amendments, ?They [the proposed amendments] relate first to private rights,? 12 Papers of James Madison 193-194 (C. Hobson et al., eds. 1979), and his initial proposal to place the amendment alongside other individual rights already protected by the Constitution in Article I, sec. 9 ? following the habeas corpus privilege and the proscriptions against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws together with Madison?s own proposed protections for speech, press, and assembly. The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins 169 (N. Cogan, ed., 1997).

Madison?s colleagues clearly understood the amendment to protect an individual right. As Rep. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts described Madison?s proposals, ?The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people.? Letter from Fisher Ames to George Richards Minot (June 12, 1789) (excerpt reprinted  in David Young, The Origin of the Second Amendment 668 (2nd ed. 1995)). The revised text of the amendment, as ratified, differs from Madison?s draft (among other ways) by moving the hortatory language about the militia to a prefatory clause, or preamble: ?A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . . .?

At the time no tension appeared between the preamble and the operative clause protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Its wording ?made perfect sense to the Framers: believing that a militia (composed of the entire people possessed of their individually owned arms) was necessary for the protection of a free state, they guaranteed the people's right to possess those arms."  Kates, supra n.6, 82 Mich. L. Rev. at 217-18.

Indeed, throughout the entire legislative record, from proposal of the amendment through ratification, no assertion of a ?collective rights? view can be found. ?If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.? Stephen Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right 83 (1984).

Every notable constitutional commentator of the 19th Century understood the Second Amendment secures individual rights. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story called the right protected by the amendment ?a right of the citizens? and noted that ?One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offence to keep arms . . . .? Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States, 264-265 (1842). St. George Tucker, the earliest prominent commentator on the Constitution, regarded the Second Amendment right as equivalent to Blackstone's ?right of the subject,? protecting ?The right of self defence [which] is the first law of nature.? 1 St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries: with Notes of Reference, to the Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Government of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 143, 300 (1803). William Rawle, in his 1829 treatise, also affirmed the individual rights view,  declaring that the amendment?s wording was broad enough to protect the right from state infringement as well as federal:

No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.  William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America 125-26 (Da Capo Press 1970) (2nd ed. 1829).

The ?collective rights? model of the Second Amendment is clearly a revisionist phenomenon. The Framers, and all prominent scholars for whom the Framers were within living memory, envisioned the Second Amendment as securing an individual right.