Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

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

13 

Opinion of the Court 

from  the  founding  period  either  includes  the  preposition
“against”  or  is  not  clearly  idiomatic.    See  Linguists’  Brief 
18–23.  Without  the  preposition,  “bear  arms”  normally 
meant  (as  it  continues  to  mean  today)  what  JUSTICE 
GINSBURG’s opinion in Muscarello said. 

In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petition­
ers  and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (some­
times)  idiomatic  meaning.    Rather,  they  manufacture  a 
hybrid  definition,  whereby  “bear  arms”  connotes  the 
actual  carrying  of  arms  (and  therefore  is  not  really  an
idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia.  No 
dictionary  has  ever  adopted  that  definition,  and  we  have
been  apprised  of  no  source  that  indicates  that  it  carried
that  meaning  at  the  time of  the  founding.    But  it  is easy
to  see  why  petitioners  and  the  dissent  are  driven  to  the 
hybrid definition.  Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic mean­
ing would cause the protected right to consist of the right
to  be  a  soldier  or  to  wage  war—an  absurdity  that  no 
commentator  has  ever  endorsed.   See  L.  Levy,  Origins  of 
the  Bill  of  Rights  135  (1999).  Worse  still,  the  phrase
“keep  and  bear  Arms”  would  be  incoherent.   The  word 
“Arms”  would  have  two  different  meanings  at  once:
“weapons”  (as  the  object  of  “keep”)  and  (as  the  object  of
“bear”) one-half of an idiom.  It would be rather like say­
ing  “He  filled  and  kicked  the  bucket”  to  mean  “He  filled 
the bucket and died.”  Grotesque.

Petitioners justify their limitation of “bear arms” to the
military  context  by  pointing  out  the  unremarkable  fact 
that  it  was  often  used  in  that  context—the  same  mistake 
they  made  with  respect  to  “keep  arms.”    It  is  especially 
unremarkable that the phrase was often used in a military 
context  in  the  federal  legal  sources  (such  as  records  of
congressional debate) that have been the focus of petition­
ers’ inquiry.  Those sources would have had little occasion 
to use it except in discussions about the standing army and 
the  militia.    And  the  phrases  used  primarily  in  those