Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 18

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

15 

Opinion of the Court 

gave  as  an  example  of  its  usage  a  sentence  unrelated  to
military  affairs  (“Servants  and  labourers  shall  use  bows
and  arrows  on  Sundays,  &c.  and  not  bear  other  arms”).
And  if  one  looks  beyond  legal  sources,  “bear  arms”  was 
frequently  used  in  nonmilitary  contexts.    See  Cramer  & 
Olson, What Did “Bear Arms” Mean in the Second Amend­
ment?,  6 Georgetown J. L. & Pub. Pol’y (forthcoming Sept.
2008),  online  at  http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1086176
(as visited June 24, 2008, and available in Clerk of Court’s
case  file)  (identifying  numerous  nonmilitary  uses  of  “bear 
arms” from the founding period).

JUSTICE STEVENS points to a study by amici supposedly
showing that the phrase “bear arms” was most frequently 
used  in  the  military  context.  See  post,  at  12–13,  n. 9; 
Linguists’  Brief  24.    Of  course,  as  we  have  said,  the  fact 
that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context 
does not show that it is limited to that context, and, in any
event, we have given many sources where the phrase was
used in nonmilitary contexts.  Moreover, the study’s collec­
tion  appears  to  include  (who  knows  how  many  times)  the 
idiomatic phrase “bear arms against,” which is irrelevant. 
The  amici  also  dismiss  examples  such  as  “ ‘bear  arms  . . . 
for  the  purpose  of  killing  game’ ”  because  those  uses  are 
“expressly  qualified.”    Linguists’  Brief  24. 
(JUSTICE 
STEVENS  uses  the  same  excuse  for  dismissing  the  state 
constitutional provisions analogous to the Second Amend­
ment  that  identify  private-use  purposes  for  which  the
individual  right  can  be  asserted.    See  post,  at  12.)    That 
analysis  is  faulty.    A  purposive  qualifying  phrase  that 
contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this 
side  of  the  looking  glass  (except,  apparently,  in  some 
If  “bear  arms”  means,  as  we 
courses  on  Linguistics). 
think,  simply  the  carrying  of  arms,  a  modifier  can  limit
the  purpose  of  the  carriage  (“for  the  purpose  of  self-
defense” or “to make war against the King”).  But if “bear 
arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the