Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 30

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

27 

Opinion of the Court 

tional beneficiary of the Second Amendment’s guarantee—
it does not assure the existence of a “citizens’ militia” as a 
safeguard against tyranny.  For Congress retains plenary 
authority  to  organize  the  militia,  which  must  include  the 
authority  to  say  who  will  belong  to  the  organized  force.17 
That  is  why  the  first  Militia  Act’s  requirement  that  only 
whites enroll caused States to amend their militia laws to 
exclude free blacks.  See Siegel, The Federal Government’s
Power  to  Enact  Color-Conscious  Laws,  92  Nw.  U.  L.  Rev. 
477,  521–525  (1998).  Thus,  if  petitioners  are  correct,  the 
Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to use a gun in
an organization from which Congress has plenary author­
ity  to  exclude  them.  It  guarantees  a  select  militia  of  the
sort  the  Stuart  kings  found  useful,  but  not  the  people’s
militia that was the concern of the founding generation. 

B 
Our  interpretation  is  confirmed  by  analogous  arms-
bearing  rights  in  state  constitutions  that  preceded  and
immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment. 
Four  States  adopted  analogues  to  the  Federal  Second 
Amendment  in  the  period  between  independence  and  the 

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17 Article I, §8, cl. 16 of the Constitution gives Congress the power 

“[t]o  provide  for  organizing,  arming,  and disciplining,  the  Militia,
and  for  governing  such  Part  of  them  as  may  be  employed  in  the
Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, 
the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the 
Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” 

It  could  not  be  clearer  that  Congress’s  “organizing”  power,  unlike  its 
“governing” power, can be invoked even for that part of the militia not
“employed  in  the  Service  of  the  United  States.”    JUSTICE  STEVENS 
provides  no  support  whatever  for  his  contrary  view,  see  post,  at  19  n. 
20.  Both the  Federalists  and Anti-Federalists read  the  provision as it
was written, to permit the creation of a “select” militia.  See The Feder­
alist  No.  29,  pp.  226,  227  (B.  Wright  ed.  1961);  Centinel,  Revived,  No.
XXIX,  Philadelphia  Independent  Gazetteer,  Sept.  9,  1789,  in  Young
711, 712.