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Page Number: 25.0

22 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

There  seems  to  us  no  doubt,  on  the  basis  of  both  text 
and  history,  that  the  Second  Amendment  conferred  an 
individual  right  to  keep  and  bear  arms.    Of  course  the 
right  was  not  unlimited,  just  as  the  First  Amendment’s
right  of  free  speech  was  not,  see,  e.g.,  United  States  v. 
Williams, 553 U. S. ___ (2008).  Thus, we do not read the 
Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry 
arms for any sort of confrontation, just as  we  do not read 
the  First  Amendment  to  protect  the  right  of  citizens  to 
speak for any purpose.  Before turning to limitations upon
the individual right, however, we must determine whether 
the  prefatory  clause  of  the  Second  Amendment  comports 
with our interpretation of the operative clause. 

2. Prefatory Clause. 
The  prefatory  clause  reads:  “A  well  regulated  Militia, 

being necessary to the security of a free State . . . .” 

a. “Well-Regulated  Militia.”    In  United  States  v. 
Miller,  307  U. S.  174,  179  (1939),  we  explained  that  “the
Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in 
concert for the common defense.”  That definition comports
with founding-era sources.  See, e.g., Webster (“The militia
of  a  country  are  the  able  bodied  men  organized  into  com­
panies, regiments and brigades . . . and required by law to 
attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other
times left to pursue their usual occupations”); The Feder­
alist No. 46, pp. 329, 334 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (J. Madison)
(“near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands”); 
Letter to Destutt de Tracy (Jan. 26, 1811), in The Portable 
Thomas Jefferson 520, 524 (M. Peterson ed. 1975) (“[T]he
militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able 
to bear arms”).

Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the mili­
tia, stating that “[m]ilitias are the state- and congression­
ally-regulated  military  forces  described  in  the  Militia
Clauses  (art.  I,  §8,  cls.  15–16).”    Brief  for  Petitioners  12.