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Page Number: 101.0

34 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

STEVENS, J., dissenting 

States  §1897,  pp. 620–621  (4th  ed.  1873)  (footnote 
omitted). 

Story  thus  began  by  tying  the  significance  of  the 
Amendment  directly  to  the  paramount  importance  of  the 
militia.  He then invoked the fear that drove the Framers 
of  the  Second  Amendment—specifically,  the  threat  to
liberty posed by a standing army.  An important check on
that danger, he suggested, was a  “well-regulated militia,” 
id., at 621, for which he assumed that arms would have to 
be kept and, when necessary, borne.  There is not so much 
as a whisper in the passage above that Story believed that 
the right secured by  the Amendment bore any relation to 
private  use  or  possession  of  weapons  for  activities  like
hunting or personal self-defense.

After  extolling  the  virtues  of  the  militia  as  a  bulwark 
against  tyranny,  Story  went  on  to  decry  the  “growing 
indifference  to  any  system  of  militia  discipline.”    Ibid. 
When he wrote, “[h]ow it is practicable to keep the people
duly  armed  without  some  organization  it  is  difficult  to
see,”  ibid., he  underscored  the  degree  to  which  he  viewed
the  arming  of  the  people  and  the  militia  as  indissolubly
linked.  Story  warned  that  the  “growing  indifference”  he 
perceived  would  “gradually  undermine  all  the  protection 
intended by this clause of our national bill of rights,” ibid. 
In  his  view,  the  importance  of  the  Amendment  was  di­
rectly related to the continuing vitality of an institution in
the process of apparently becoming obsolete. 

In an attempt to downplay the absence of any reference
to nonmilitary uses of weapons in Story’s commentary, the 
Court  relies  on  the  fact  that  Story  characterized  Article 
VII  of  the  English  Declaration  of  Rights  as  a  “ ‘similar 
provision,’ ”  ante,  at  36.  The  two  provisions  were  indeed 
similar, in that both protected some uses of firearms.  But 
Story’s  characterization  in  no  way  suggests  that  he  be­
lieved  that  the  provisions  had  the  same  scope.  To  the