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Page Number: 11.0

8 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

The  term  was  applied,  then  as  now,  to  weapons  that
were  not  specifically  designed  for  military  use  and  were
not  employed  in  a  military  capacity.    For  instance,  Cun­
ningham’s  legal  dictionary  gave  as  an  example  of  usage:
“Servants  and  labourers  shall  use  bows  and  arrows  on 
Sundays, &c. and not bear other arms.”  See also, e.g., An 
Act for the trial of Negroes, 1797 Del. Laws ch. XLIII, §6, 
p. 104,  in  1  First  Laws  of  the  State  of  Delaware  102,  104 
(J.  Cushing  ed.  1981  (pt.  1));  see  generally  State  v.  Duke, 
42  Tex.  455,  458  (1874)  (citing  decisions  of  state  courts 
construing “arms”).  Although one founding-era thesaurus
limited  “arms”  (as  opposed  to  “weapons”)  to  “instruments
of offence generally made use of in war,” even that source 
stated  that  all  firearms  constituted  “arms.”    1  J.  Trusler, 
The Distinction Between Words Esteemed Synonymous in 
the English Language 37 (1794) (emphasis added). 

Some  have  made  the  argument,  bordering  on  the  frivo­
lous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century 
are  protected  by  the  Second  Amendment.    We  do  not  in­
terpret  constitutional  rights  that  way.    Just  as  the  First 
Amendment  protects  modern  forms  of  communications, 
e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 
849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern
forms  of  search,  e.g.,  Kyllo  v.  United  States,  533  U. S.  27, 
35–36  (2001),  the  Second  Amendment  extends,  prima 
facie,  to  all  instruments  that  constitute  bearable  arms, 
even  those  that  were  not  in  existence  at  the  time  of  the 
founding.

We  turn  to  the  phrases  “keep  arms”  and  “bear  arms.”
Johnson  defined  “keep”  as,  most  relevantly,  “[t]o  retain;
not  to  lose,”  and  “[t]o  have  in  custody.”    Johnson  1095. 
Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or 
possession.”  No  party  has  apprised  us  of  an  idiomatic 
meaning of “keep Arms.”  Thus, the most natural reading 
of  “keep  Arms”  in  the  Second  Amendment  is  to  “have 
weapons.”