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Page Number: 95.0

28 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

STEVENS, J., dissenting 

sources  shed  only  indirect  light  on  the  question  before 
us,  and  in  any  event  offer  little  support  for  the  Court’s 
conclusion.29 

—————— 

“The legislative history of a statute is the history of its consideration
and  enactment.    ‘Subsequent  legislative  history’—which  presumably 
means  the  post-enactment  history  of  a  statute’s  consideration  and 
enactment—is a contradiction in terms.  The phrase is used to smuggle 
into  judicial  consideration  legislators’  expression  not  of  what  a  bill 
currently  under  consideration  means  (which,  the  theory  goes,  reflects 
what  their  colleagues  understood  they  were  voting  for),  but  of  what  a
law previously enacted means. . . . In my opinion, the views of a legisla­
tor concerning a statute already enacted are entitled to no more weight 
than  the  views  of  a  judge  concerning  a  statute  not  yet  passed.”    Sulli-
van v. Finkelstein, 496 U. S. 617, 631–632 (1990) (SCALIA, J., concurring 
in part).

29 The  Court  stretches  to  derive  additional  support  from  scattered 

state-court  cases  primarily  concerned  with  state  constitutional  provi­
sions.  See  ante,  at  38–41.    To  the  extent  that  those  state  courts  as­
sumed that the Second Amendment was coterminous with their differ­
ently  worded  state  constitutional  arms  provisions,  their  discussions 
were  of  course  dicta.    Moreover,  the  cases  on  which  the  Court  relies 
were  decided  between  30  and  60  years  after  the  ratification  of  the
Second  Amendment,  and  there  is  no  indication  that  any  of  them  en­
gaged in a careful textual or historical analysis of the federal constitu­
tional provision.  Finally, the interpretation of the Second Amendment 
advanced in those cases is not as clear as the Court apparently believes.  
In  Aldridge  v.  Commonwealth,  2  Va.  Cas.  447  (Gen.  Ct.  1824),  for
example,  a  Virginia  court  pointed  to  the  restriction  on  free  blacks’ 
“right  to  bear  arms”  as  evidence  that  the  protections  of  the  State  and 
Federal Constitutions did not extend to free blacks.  The Court asserts 
that  “[t]he  claim  was  obviously  not  that  blacks  were  prevented  from 
carrying guns in the militia.”  Ante, at 39.  But it is not obvious at all. 
For in many States, including Virginia, free blacks during the colonial
period were prohibited from carrying guns in the militia, instead being
required  to  “muste[r]  without  arms”;  they  were  later  barred  from 
serving in the militia altogether.  See Siegel, The Federal Government’s
Power  to  Enact  Color-Conscious  Laws:  An  Originalist  Inquiry,  92  Nw. 
U.  L. Rev.  477,  497–498,  and  n.  120  (1998).    But  my  point  is  not  that 
the Aldridge court endorsed my view of the Amendment—plainly it did
not,  as  the  premise  of  the  relevant  passage  was  that  the  Second
Amendment applied to the States.  Rather, my point is simply that the 
court  could  have  understood  the  Second  Amendment  to  protect  a