Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 42

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

39 

Opinion of the Court 

Waters  v.  State,  1  Gill  302,  309  (Md.  1843)  (because  free 
blacks  were  treated  as  a  “dangerous  population,”  “laws
have  been  passed  to  prevent  their  migration  into  this 
State; to make it unlawful for them to bear arms; to guard 
even  their  religious  assemblages  with  peculiar  watchful­
ness”).  An 1829 decision by the Supreme Court of Michi­
gan  said:  “The  constitution  of  the  United  States  also 
grants to the citizen the right to keep and bear arms.  But 
the  grant  of  this  privilege  cannot  be  construed  into  the 
right in him who keeps a gun to destroy his neighbor.  No 
rights  are  intended  to  be  granted  by  the  constitution  for
an  unlawful  or  unjustifiable  purpose.”  United  States  v. 
Sheldon,  in  5  Transactions  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
Territory of Michigan 337, 346 (W. Blume ed. 1940) (here­
inafter Blume).  It is not possible to read this as discussing
anything  other  than  an  individual  right  unconnected  to 
militia service.  If it did have to do with militia service, the 
limitation upon it would not be any “unlawful or unjustifi­
able purpose,” but any nonmilitary purpose whatsoever.

In  Nunn  v.  State,  1  Ga.  243,  251  (1846),  the  Georgia
Supreme  Court  construed  the  Second  Amendment  as 
protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore
struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly.  Its opinion 
perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause of 
the  Second  Amendment  furthers  the  purpose  announced 

—————— 

entirely from the militia by the First Militia Act.  See Siegel, supra, at 
498, n. 120.   JUSTICE STEVENS further suggests that laws barring blacks
from  militia  service  could  have  been  said  to  violate  the  “right  to  bear
arms.”  But under JUSTICE STEVENS’ reading of the Second Amendment 
(we think), the protected right is the right to carry arms to the extent
one is enrolled in the militia, not the right to be in the militia.  Perhaps
JUSTICE STEVENS really does adopt the full-blown idiomatic meaning of
“bear arms,” in which case every man and woman in this country has a
right “to be a soldier” or even “to wage war.”  In any case, it is clear to 
us  that  Aldridge’s  allusion  to  the  existing  Virginia  “restriction”  upon
the right of free blacks “to bear arms” could only have referred to “laws 
prohibiting blacks from keeping weapons,” Siegel, supra, at 497–498.