Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/constitution/amendment-02/index.php
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 20:21:47+00:00

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In spite of extensive recent discussion and much legislative action with respect to regulation of the purchase, possession, and transportation of firearms, as well as proposals to substantially curtail ownership of firearms, there is no definitive resolution by the courts of just what right the Second Amendment protects. The opposing theories, perhaps oversimplified, are an "individual rights" thesis whereby individuals are protected in ownership, possession, and transportation, and a "states' rights" thesis whereby it is said the purpose of the clause is to protect the States in their authority to maintain formal, organized militia units.1 Whatever the Amendment may mean, it is a bar only to federal action, not extending to state2 or private3 restraints. The Supreme Court has given effect to the dependent clause of the Amendment in the only case in which it has tested a congressional enactment against the constitutional prohibition, seeming to affirm individual protection but only in the context of the maintenance of a militia or other such public force.
1 A sampling of the diverse literature in which the same historical, linguistic, and case law background is the basis for strikingly different conclusions is: Staff of Subcom. on the Constitution, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Congress, 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Comm. Print 1982); DON B. KATES, HANDGUN PROHIBITION AND THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT (1984); GUN CONTROL AND THE CONSTITUTION: SOURCES AND EXPLORATIONS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT (Robert J. Cottrol ed., 1993); STEPHEN P. HALBROOK, THAT EVERY MAN BE ARMED: THE EVOLUTION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT (1984); Symposium, Gun Control, 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 1 (1986); Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 YALE L.J. 637 (1989); JOYCE LEE MALCOLM, TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS: THE ORIGINS OF AN ANGLO-AMERICAN RIGHT (1994); Glenn Harlan Reynolds, A Critical Guide to the Second Amendment, 62 TENN. L. REV. 461 (1995); William Van Alystyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Bear Arms, 43 DUKE L.J. 1236 (1994).
2 Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886). See also Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535 (1894); Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281-282 (1897). The non-application of the Second Amendment to the States was more recently reaffirmed in Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F. 2d 261 (7th Cir. 1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 863 (1983).
3 United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875).
4 307 U.S. 174 (1939). The defendants had been released on the basis of the trial court determination that prosecution would violate the Second Amendment and no briefs or other appearances were filed on their behalf; the Court acted on the basis of the Government's representations.
7 Id. at 178. In Cases v. United States, 131 F. 2d 916, 922 (1st Cir. 1942), cert. denied, 319 U.S. 770 (1943), the court, upholding a similar provision of the Federal Firearms Act, said: "Apparently, then, under the Second Amendment, the federal government can limit the keeping and bearing of arms by a single individual as well as by a group of individuals, but it cannot prohibit the possession or use of any weapon which has any reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia." See Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 65 n.8 (1980) (dictum: Miller holds that the "Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have 'some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia"'). See also Hickman v. Block, 81 F.3d 98 (9th Cir.) (plaintiff lacked standing to challenge denial of permit to carry concealed weapon, because Second Amendment is a right held by states, not by private citizens), cert. denied 519 U.S. 912 (1996); United States v. Gomez, 92 F.3d 770, 775 n. 7 (9th Cir. 1996) (interpreting federal prohibition on possession of firearm by a felon as having a justification defense "ensures that [the provision] does not collide with the Second Amendment"). United States v. Wright, 117 F.3d 1265 (11th Cir.), cert. denied 522 U.S. 1007 (1997) (member of Georgia unorganized militia unable to establish that his possession of machine guns and pipe bombs bore any connection to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia).
8 Enacted measures include the Gun Control Act of 1968. 82 Stat. 226, 18 U.S.C. §§ 921-928. The Supreme Court's dealings with these laws have all arisen in the context of prosecutions of persons purchasing or obtaining firearms in violation of prohibitions against such conduct by convicted felons. Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55 (1980); Barrett v. United States, 423 U.S. 212 (1976); Scarborough v. United States, 431 U.S. 563 (1977); United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336 (1971).
9 E.g., NATIONAL COMMISSION ON.REFORM OF FEDERAL CRIMINAL LAWS, WORKING PAPERS 1031-1058 (1970), and FINAL REPORT 246-247 (1971).
10 Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 937-39 (1997) (quoting 3 Commentaries § 1890, p. 746 (1833)). Justice Scalia, in extra-judicial writing, has sided with the individual rights interpretation of the Amendment. See ANTONIN SCALIA, A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION, FEDERAL COURTS AND THE LAW, 136-37 n.13 (A. Gutmann, ed., 1997) (responding to Professor Tribe's critique of "my interpretation of the Second Amendment as a guarantee that the federal government will not interfere with the individual's right to bear arms for self-defense").

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 § 1890