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Page Number: 51

48 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

for  their  protection  against  any  violation  by  their  fellow-
citizens  of  the  rights  it  recognizes”  to  the  States’  police 
power.  92  U. S.,  at  553.    That  discussion  makes  little 
sense if it is only a right to bear arms in a state militia.23 

Presser  v.  Illinois,  116  U. S.  252  (1886),  held  that  the
right to keep and bear arms was not violated by a law that 
forbade  “bodies  of  men  to  associate  together  as  military 
organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in cities and
towns  unless  authorized  by  law.”    Id.,  at  264–265.    This 
does  not  refute  the  individual-rights  interpretation  of  the 
Amendment;  no  one  supporting  that  interpretation  has 
contended that States may not ban such groups.  JUSTICE 
STEVENS  presses  Presser  into  service  to  support  his  view
that  the  right  to  bear  arms  is  limited  to  service  in  the
militia  by  joining  Presser’s  brief  discussion  of  the  Second 
Amendment with a later portion of the opinion making the 
seemingly relevant (to the Second Amendment) point that
the plaintiff was not a member of the state militia.  Unfor­
tunately  for  JUSTICE  STEVENS’  argument,  that  later  por­
tion  deals  with  the  Fourteenth  Amendment;  it  was  the 
Fourteenth  Amendment  to  which  the  plaintiff’s  nonmem­
bership  in  the  militia  was  relevant.    Thus,  JUSTICE 
STEVENS’ statement that Presser “suggested that. . . noth­
ing  in  the  Constitution  protected  the  use  of  arms  outside
the  context  of  a  militia,”  post,  at  40,  is  simply  wrong. 

—————— 

is  wrong.    It  is  true  it  was  the  indictment  that  described  the  right  as
“bearing  arms  for  a  lawful  purpose.”    But,  in  explicit  reference  to  the
right  described  in  the  indictment,  the  Court  stated  that  “The  second 
amendment declares that it [i.e., the right of bearing arms for a lawful 
purpose] shall not be infringed.”  92 U. S., at 553. 

23 With  respect  to  Cruikshank’s  continuing  validity  on  incorporation, 
a  question  not  presented  by  this  case,  we  note  that  Cruikshank  also 
said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did 
not  engage  in  the  sort  of  Fourteenth  Amendment  inquiry  required  by
our later cases.  Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 
265  (1886)  and  Miller  v.  Texas,  153  U. S.  535,  538  (1894),  reaffirmed
that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.