Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

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

33 

Opinion of the Court 

the  Second  Amendment  in  published  writings.  All  three 
understood  it  to  protect  an  individual  right  unconnected 
with militia service. 

St. George Tucker’s version of Blackstone’s Commentar­
ies,  as  we  explained  above,  conceived  of  the  Blackstonian
arms right as necessary for self-defense.  He equated that
right,  absent  the  religious  and  class-based  restrictions,
with  the  Second  Amendment.  See  2  Tucker’s  Blackstone 
143.  In Note D, entitled, “View of the Constitution of the 
United  States,”  Tucker  elaborated  on  the  Second  Amend­
ment:  “This  may  be  considered  as  the  true  palladium  of
liberty . . . .  The  right  to  self-defence  is  the  first  law  of 
nature:  in  most  governments  it  has  been  the  study  of 
rulers  to  confine  the  right  within  the  narrowest  limits
possible.  Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the 
right  of  the  people  to  keep  and  bear  arms  is,  under  any 
colour  or  pretext  whatsoever,  prohibited,  liberty,  if  not 
already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”  1 id., 
at  App.  300  (ellipsis  in  original).    He  believed  that  the 
English  game  laws  had  abridged  the  right  by  prohibiting 
“keeping  a  gun  or  other  engine  for  the  destruction  of 
game.”  Ibid; see also 2 id., at 143, and nn. 40 and 41.  He 
later grouped the right with some of the individual rights
included  in  the  First  Amendment  and  said  that  if  “a  law 
be passed by congress,  prohibiting” any of those rights, it
would  “be  the  province  of  the  judiciary  to  pronounce
whether  any  such  act  were  constitutional,  or  not;  and  if 
not,  to  acquit  the  accused  . . . .”    1  id.,  at  App.  357.    It  is 
unlikely  that  Tucker  was  referring  to  a  person’s  being 
“accused” of violating a law making it a crime to bear arms
in a state militia.19 
—————— 

19 JUSTICE STEVENS quotes some of Tucker’s unpublished notes, which
he  claims  show  that  Tucker  had  ambiguous  views  about  the  Second
Amendment.  See post, at 31, and n. 32.  But it is clear from the notes 
that  Tucker  located  the  power  of  States  to  arm  their  militias  in  the 
Tenth  Amendment,  and  that  he  cited  the  Second  Amendment  for  the