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36 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

a  soldier,  or  in  defense  solely  of  his  political  rights.”  An-
drews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 183 (1871).  Story’s Commen­
taries  also  cite  as  support  Tucker  and  Rawle,  both  of 
whom  clearly  viewed  the  right  as  unconnected  to  militia
service.  See 3 Story §1890, n. 2; §1891, n. 3.  In addition, 
in  a  shorter  1840  work  Story  wrote:  “One  of  the  ordinary 
modes,  by  which  tyrants  accomplish  their  purposes  with­
out resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it
an  offence  to  keep  arms,  and  by  substituting  a  regular 
army  in  the  stead  of  a  resort  to  the  militia.”    A  Familiar 
Exposition  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  §450 
(reprinted in 1986).

Antislavery  advocates  routinely  invoked  the  right  to
bear  arms  for  self-defense.    Joel  Tiffany,  for  example,
citing Blackstone’s description of the right, wrote that “the
right to keep and bear arms, also implies the right to use 
them if necessary in self defence; without this right to use 
the  guaranty  would  have  hardly  been  worth  the  paper  it 
consumed.”  A  Treatise  on  the  Unconstitutionality  of
American Slavery 117–118 (1849); see also L. Spooner, The
Unconstitutionality  of  Slavery  116  (1845)  (right  enables
“personal  defence”).    In  his  famous  Senate  speech  about 
the  1856  “Bleeding  Kansas”  conflict,  Charles  Sumner
proclaimed: 

“The rifle has ever been the companion of the pioneer
and, under God, his tutelary protector against the red 
man and the beast of the forest.  Never was this effi­
cient  weapon  more  needed  in  just  self-defence,  than 
now  in  Kansas,  and  at  least  one  article  in  our  Na­
tional  Constitution  must  be  blotted  out,  before  the 
complete  right  to  it  can  in  any  way  be  impeached. 
And yet such is the madness of the hour, that, in defi­
ance  of  the  solemn  guarantee,  embodied  in  the 
Amendments to the Constitution, that ‘the right of the 
people  to  keep  and  bear  arms  shall  not  be  infringed,’