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26 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

Origin of the Second Amendment 275, 276 (D. Young ed., 
2d ed. 2001) (hereinafter Young); White, To the Citizens of 
Virginia,  Feb.  22,  1788,  in  id.,  at  280,  281;  A  Citizen  of 
America, (Oct. 10, 1787) in id., at 38, 40; Remarks on the 
Amendments to the federal Constitution, Nov. 7, 1788, in 
id.,  at  556.    It  was  understood  across  the  political  spec­
trum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen 
militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive
military force if the constitutional order broke down. 

It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amend­
ment’s  prefatory  clause  announces  the  purpose  for  which 
the  right  was  codified:  to  prevent  elimination  of  the  mili­
tia.  The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving 
the  militia  was  the  only  reason  Americans  valued  the
ancient  right;  most  undoubtedly  thought  it  even  more
important  for  self-defense  and  hunting.  But  the  threat 
that  the  new  Federal  Government  would  destroy  the 
citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason 
that  right—unlike  some  other  English  rights—was  codi­
fied  in  a  written  Constitution.  JUSTICE  BREYER’s  asser­
tion  that  individual  self-defense  is  merely  a  “subsidiary 
interest”  of  the  right  to  keep  and  bear  arms,  see  post,  at 
36, is profoundly mistaken.  He bases that assertion solely 
upon  the  prologue—but  that  can  only  show  that  self-
defense had little to do with the right’s codification; it was 
the central component of the right itself.

Besides  ignoring  the  historical  reality  that  the  Second
Amendment  was  not  intended  to  lay  down  a  “novel  prin­
cipl[e]”  but  rather  codified  a  right  “inherited  from  our
English  ancestors,”  Robertson  v.  Baldwin,  165  U. S.  275, 
281  (1897),  petitioners’  interpretation  does  not  even
achieve  the  narrower  purpose  that  prompted  codification
of  the  right.  If,  as  they  believe,  the  Second  Amendment
right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as
a member of an organized militia, see Brief for Petitition­
ers 8—if, that is, the organized  militia is the sole institu­