Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

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

7 

Opinion of the Court 

Fourth  Amendment,  and  by  the  First  and  Second 
Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are re­
served in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to 
a class of persons who are part of a national commu­
nity  or  who  have  otherwise  developed  sufficient  con­
nection with this country to be considered part of that
community.” 

This  contrasts  markedly  with  the  phrase  “the  militia”  in 
the prefatory clause.  As we will describe below, the “mili­
tia”  in  colonial  America  consisted  of  a  subset  of  “the  peo­
ple”—those  who  were  male,  able  bodied,  and  within  a 
certain  age  range.  Reading  the  Second  Amendment  as
protecting  only  the  right  to  “keep  and  bear  Arms”  in  an
organized  militia  therefore  fits  poorly  with  the  operative 
clause’s  description  of  the  holder  of  that  right  as  “the
people.”

We  start  therefore  with  a  strong  presumption  that  the
Second  Amendment  right  is  exercised  individually  and
belongs to all Americans. 

b. “Keep  and  bear  Arms.”  We  move  now  from  the  
holder  of  the  right—“the  people”—to  the  substance  of  the
right: “to keep and bear Arms.” 

Before addressing the verbs “keep” and “bear,” we inter­
pret their object: “Arms.”  The 18th-century meaning is no 
different  from  the  meaning  today.  The  1773  edition  of 
Samuel  Johnson’s  dictionary  defined  “arms”  as  “weapons 
of  offence,  or  armour  of  defence.”   1  Dictionary  of  the
English  Language  107  (4th  ed.)  (hereinafter  Johnson). 
Timothy  Cunningham’s  important  1771  legal  dictionary
defined  “arms”  as  “any  thing  that  a  man  wears  for  his
defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast 
at  or  strike  another.”    1  A  New  and  Complete  Law  Dic­
tionary  (1771);  see  also  N.  Webster,  American  Dictionary 
of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1989) (hereinaf­
ter Webster) (similar).