Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 46

Cite as:  554 U. S. ____ (2008) 

43 

Opinion of the Court 

an editorial in The Loyal Georgian (Augusta) on February 
3, 1866, assured blacks that “[a]ll men, without distinction
of  color,  have  the  right  to  keep  and  bear  arms  to  defend
their homes, families or themselves.”  Halbrook 19. 

Congress  enacted  the  Freedmen’s  Bureau  Act  on  July

16, 1866.  Section 14 stated: 

“[T]he  right  . . .  to  have  full  and  equal  benefit  of  all 
laws  and  proceedings  concerning  personal  liberty,
personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and 
disposition of  estate,  real  and  personal,  including  the 
constitutional  right  to  bear  arms,  shall  be  secured  to 
and  enjoyed  by  all  the  citizens  . . .  without  respect  to 
race or color, or previous condition of slavery. . . . ”  14 
Stat. 176–177. 

The  understanding  that  the  Second  Amendment  gave
freed blacks the right to keep and bear arms was reflected 
in congressional discussion of the bill, with even an oppo­
nent  of  it  saying  that  the  founding  generation  “were  for 
every man bearing his arms about him and keeping them
in his house, his castle, for his own defense.”  Cong. Globe,
39th Cong., 1st Sess., 362, 371 (1866) (Sen. Davis). 

Similar  discussion  attended  the  passage  of  the  Civil 
Rights  Act  of  1871  and  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.    For 
example,  Representative  Butler  said  of  the  Act:  “Section 
eight is intended to enforce the well-known constitutional 
provision guaranteeing the right of the citizen to ‘keep and 
bear arms,’ and provides that whoever shall take away, by 
force or violence, or by threats and intimidation, the arms 
and weapons which any person may have for his defense, 
shall be deemed guilty of larceny of the same.”  H. R. Rep. 
No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 7–8 (1871).  With respect
to  the  proposed  Amendment,  Senator  Pomeroy  described 
as  one  of  the  three  “indispensable”  “safeguards  of  liberty 
. . . under the Constitution” a man’s “right to bear arms for 
the  defense  of  himself  and  family  and  his  homestead.”