Title: State v. Hirsch/Friend
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S49370
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: June 23, 2005

FILED:  June 23, 2005
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
MARK LEE HIRSCH,
Petitioner on Review.
STATE OF OREGON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
LAWRENCE AARON FRIEND,
Petitioner on Review.
(CC 99CR2684FE, 99CR1105FE; CA A109091, A108859;
SC S49370, S49371)
(Consolidated for Argument and Opinion)
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted May 6, 2003.
Susan F. Drake, Deputy Public Defender, Salem, argued the cause
for petitioners on review.  With her on the briefs were Walter J.
Ledesma, Deputy Public Defender, and David E. Groom, Public
Defender.
Rolf C. Moan, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued the cause
for respondent on review.  With him on the briefs were Hardy
Myers, Attorney General, and Mary H. Williams, Solicitor General.
Before Carson, Chief Justice, and Gillette, Durham, Riggs, De
Muniz, and Balmer, Justices.**
DURHAM, J.
The decisions of the Court of Appeals and the judgments of the
circuit court are affirmed.
* Appeals from Douglas County Circuit Court,  William L.
Lasswell, Judge. 177 Or App 441, 34 P3d 1209 (2001); 178 Or App
157, 35 P3d 1105 (2001).
** Kistler, J., did not participate in the consideration or
decision of these cases.
DURHAM, J.
In these two criminal cases, consolidated for purposes
of review, the trial court convicted each defendant of the crime
of felon in possession of a firearm, ORS 166.270(1). (1) 
Defendants contend that ORS 166.270(1) is facially
unconstitutional because that statute infringes on the right to
bear arms guaranteed under Article I, section 27, of the Oregon
Constitution. (2)  The Court of Appeals disagreed with that
contention and, in each case, affirmed the trial court's
decisions to overrule defendants' demurrers.  State v.
Friend, 178 Or App 157, 35 P3d 1105 (2001); State v.
Hirsch, 177 Or App 441, 34 P3d 1209 (2001).  We allowed review
and now conclude, as did the Court of Appeals, that ORS
166.270(1) is not unconstitutionally overbroad on its face. 
Accordingly, we affirm the decisions of the Court of Appeals and
the judgments of the trial court.
I.  FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The facts of each case are undisputed.  In November
1999, while on parole for a prior felony conviction, defendant
Hirsch brought a .308 caliber Winchester bolt-action rifle into a
gun shop to have it bore-sighted.  The police arrested him, and
the state charged him with the crime of being a felon in
possession of a firearm, ORS 166.270(1).  Defendant demurred to
the indictment on the ground that ORS 166.270(1) violated Article
I, section 27.  The trial court overruled the demurrer and, after
a bench trial, found defendant guilty of the charged offense. 
Defendant appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 
Hirsch, 177 Or App at 449.
In May 1999, Deputy Sheriff Summers stopped defendant
Friend and arrested him for driving under the influence of
intoxicants.  Because the police intended to impound defendant's
vehicle, Deputy Baimbridge conducted an inventory search. 
Baimbridge found a .223 caliber bolt-action rifle and several
rounds of live ammunition in the vehicle.  Defendant admitted to
Summers that he owned the rifle and used it for hunting. 
Defendant was charged with, among other things, the crime of
being a felon in possession of a firearm.  Defendant demurred to
that charge on the ground that ORS 166.270(1) violated Article I,
section 27.  The trial court overruled that demurrer and, after a
bench trial, found defendant guilty of all charges.  Defendant
appealed his felon in possession of a firearm conviction, and the
Court of Appeals affirmed, citing its decision in Hirsch. 
Friend, 178 Or App at 157.
In Hirsch, the Court of Appeals examined the
history of the right to bear arms and the restrictions on gun
ownership in precolonial England and the United States up to the
adoption of Article I, section 27, of the Oregon Constitution. 
The court determined from that history that the drafters of the
Oregon Constitution would not have understood the right to bear
arms to guarantee an absolute right to the possession of arms. 
177 Or App at 445-48.  The court also determined that the framers
would have "regarded felons as noncitizens, not entitled to the
constitutional guarantee of political rights such as the
franchise and the right to bear arms."  Id. at 449.  Thus,
the court concluded that Article I, section 27, "does not
prohibit the legislature from barring felons from possessing
firearms."  Id.
We allowed both defendants' petitions for review to
determine whether ORS 166.270(1) unconstitutionally infringes on
the right to bear arms set out in Article I, section 27, of the
Oregon Constitution.
II.  NATURE OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE AT ISSUE
A. Facial Overbreadth Challenge
At the outset, we clarify the nature of the parties'
disputes under the Oregon Constitution.  Defendants contend that
ORS 166.270(1) is unconstitutionally "overbroad" on its face. 
Specifically, defendants argue that, although the legislature
might have authority under Article I, section 27, to prohibit the
possession of firearms as to certain dangerous felons, the
legislature is without authority to prohibit possession
categorically as to all felons.  The state responds that,
because defendants raised only facial challenges to ORS
166.270(1), they must establish that that statute is
unconstitutional in all its applications.  In the state's view,
any such effort in that regard fails, in light of defendants'
apparent concession that the legislature permissibly may limit
arms possession as to certain dangerous felons.  It follows, the
state argues, that defendants fall short of satisfying a
prerequisite to their facial challenges (that is, that the
statute is unconstitutional in all its applications) and,
therefore, that this court should refrain from reaching the
merits of defendants' arguments respecting Article I, section 27.
The state is correct that, when bringing certain facial
constitutional challenges to a statute, the challenger ordinarily
must establish that the statute is unconstitutional in all its
applications.  See Jensen v. Whitlow, 334 Or 412,
421, 51 P3d 599 (2002); State v. Sutherland, 329 Or 359,
365, 987 P2d 501 (1999) (both stating principle).  Where that
principle applies, if the challenger is unable to establish
facial unconstitutionality in that manner, then the challenger is
left to argue only that the statute is unconstitutional as
applied to the particular facts at hand.  See, e.g.,
State ex rel Kane v. Goldschmidt, 308 Or 573, 590, 783 P2d
988 (1989) (although state-approved financing agreements did not
contravene constitutional debt limitations on their face, future,
unpredictable circumstances could render agreements in violation
of those limitations); Hunter v. State of Oregon, 306 Or
529, 533-34, 761 P2d 502 (1988) (although unavailability of post-conviction relief to persons convicted of municipal ordinance
violations did not in itself contravene equal privilege and
immunities protections, future unequal application of ordinances
to certain classes could implicate those protections). (3)
However, defendants here do not assert that ORS
166.270(1) is unconstitutional on its face because it violates
Article I, section 27, in all its applications.  Rather, they
particularly argue that, on its face, that statute is
unconstitutionally overbroad.  The term "overbreadth" connotes a
particular type of facial constitutional challenge in which the
challenger contends that, although a statute constitutionally
could apply in some circumstances, it impermissibly, and
necessarily, impinges on a constitutional guarantee in other
circumstances by prohibiting conduct that is constitutionally
protected.  State v. Robertson, 293 Or 402, 410, 649 P2d
569 (1982); State v. Blocker, 291 Or 255, 261, 630 P2d 824
(1981).  Unlike with other facial challenges, a challenger
raising an overbreadth challenge need not demonstrate that the
statute at issue is unconstitutional under the particular
circumstances at hand.  Rather, the challenger will prevail in
his or her facial challenge if the court concludes that the
statute in question prohibits constitutionally protected conduct
of any kind.  See Blocker, 291 Or at 261 ("[T]o the
extent that an overbroad law forbids what may not
constitutionally be forbidden, it is invalid as such without
regard to the facts in the individual case.").
In short, a challenger appropriately raises a claim of
overbreadth whenever a legislative enactment, in certain
circumstances, purportedly contravenes a constitutional provision
that delineates protected conduct.  To illustrate, this court on
many occasions has addressed overbreadth challenges involving
Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution, which
delineates constitutionally protected conduct by guaranteeing the
right to free expression of opinion and the right to speak,
write, or print freely on any subject whatever.  See, e.g.,
City of Hillsboro v. Purcell, 306 Or 547, 556, 761 P2d 510
(1988); State v. Ray, 302 Or 595, 733 P2d 28 (1987) (both
agreeing with claims asserting overbreadth under Article I,
section 8).  More recently, this court also addressed an
overbreadth challenge invoking both Article I, section 8, and
Article I, section 26, which delineates constitutionally
protected conduct by guaranteeing the right to peaceable
assembly.  State v. Ausmus, 336 Or 493, 85 P3d 864 (2004). 
In all the foregoing cases, the court concluded that the statutes
at issue impinged on the rights guaranteed under Article I,
sections 8 and 26, in certain circumstances, even though they did
not necessarily do so in all circumstances.  See
Ausmus, 336 Or at 507; Purcell, 306 Or at 555-56;
Ray, 302 Or at 600-01 (all so concluding).  Further,
consistently with the nature of overbreadth challenges, the court
did not examine the particular facts of the cases before it. 
Rather, the court concluded in each case that the fact that the
statute at issue, on its face, impinged on constitutionally
protected conduct in certain circumstances compelled invalidation
of the statute.
Like Article I, section 8, and Article I, section 26,
Article I, section 27, delineates constitutionally protected
conduct, by guaranteeing the right of the people to bear arms for
the defense of themselves and the state.  Consequently, a claim
of overbreadth is appropriate when a challenger contends that, in
certain circumstances, a statute impinges on that right.  Indeed,
this court recognized as much in Blocker, 291 Or at 261-62
(discussed further below), when it concluded that a statute that
prohibited possession of certain types of weapons "reached beyond
permissible limits to impinge on a constitutionally protected
right."  Id. at 261.  Likewise, defendants here
appropriately ground their challenges in the overbreadth
doctrine, because they argue that ORS 166.270(1)
unconstitutionally impinges on the right to bear arms in certain
circumstances, even though that statute arguably could apply in a
constitutional manner in other circumstances (that is, as to
certain dangerous felons).
We clarify one further aspect of an overbreadth
challenge that bears on our analysis set out below.  As this
court has noted before, courts may be able in some circumstances
to resolve overbreadth challenges through statutory
interpretation.  That is, the court ultimately may determine that
the legislature did not intend the statute at issue to operate
with the breadth that the challenger attributes to it.  See
Robertson, 293 Or at 412 (explaining that, in some
circumstances, court may save overbroad law through narrowing
construction that is fully consistent with legislature's intent);
see also State v. Rangel, 328 Or 294, 304-06, 997 P2d 379 (1999) (applying principle to criminal stalking statute in
context of facial overbreadth challenge).  However, for purposes
of the issue before us here, the text of ORS 166.270(1) offers no
opportunity for a narrowing judicial construction:  it prohibits
all persons convicted of any felony under state or
federal law from possessing firearms in all
circumstances. (4)
B. Burden of Persuasion
One further preliminary matter requires mention here. 
The state asserts that, in bringing their facial challenges to
ORS 166.270(1), defendants bear the burden of proving that
that statute prohibits conduct that Article I, section 27,
protects.  We disagree.  As this court has explained, "an
ambiguity in the constitution or in a statute does not, by
itself, create an issue of fact, let alone one that must be
resolved by the presentation of evidence."  Ecumenical
Ministries v. Oregon State Lottery Commission, 318 Or 551,
558, 871 P2d 106 (1994).  Rather, the court's "'sole duty * * * is to resolve the dispute in terms of
the applicability of * * * the constitutional provision[]'" that
defendants invoke, that is, Article I, section 27.  Id. at
559 (quoting Monaghan v. School District No. 1, 211 Or 360,
363, 315 P2d 797 (1957) (first ellipsis in Ecumenical
Ministries)).  We proceed to that task now.
III.  SCOPE OF THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
UNDER ARTICLE I, SECTION 27
A. Preliminary Discussion
ORS 166.270(1) operates to prohibit "[a]ny person who
has been convicted of a felony" under state or federal law from
possessing "any firearm."  Defendants assert that that
prohibition renders ORS 166.270(1) unconstitutionally overbroad
on its face because Article I, section 27, guarantees the right
of any person to possess a firearm without regard to whether that
person has been convicted of a felony.
Our task, then, is to determine whether Article I,
section 27, protects the possession of a firearm by a person who
has been convicted of a felony.  To do so, we must discern the
intent of the drafters of Article I, section 27, and the people
who adopted it.  The goal of that inquiry is "to understand the
wording in the light of the way that wording would have been
understood and used by those who created the provision,"
Vannatta v. Keisling, 324 Or 514, 530, 931 P2d 770 (1997),
and to "apply faithfully the principles embodied in the Oregon
Constitution to modern circumstances as those circumstances
arise," State v. Rogers, 330 Or 282, 297, 4 P3d 1261
(2000).  Our analysis consists of an examination of the text of
the constitutional provision, the case law surrounding it, and
the historical circumstances that led to its creation.  Priest
v. Pearce, 314 Or 411, 415-16, 840 P2d 65 (1992).
Before proceeding, we note that we are not unmindful of
the controversy surrounding the right to bear arms and the
seemingly practical wisdom of prohibiting convicted felons from
possessing firearms.  However, as this court previously has
explained, "we are not free to interpret the constitution in any
way that might seem to us to be sound public policy." 
Stranahan v. Fred Meyer, Inc., 331 Or 38, 66 n 19, 11 P3d
228 (2000).  Rather, our task "is to respect the principles given
the status of constitutional guarantees and limitations by the
drafters[.]"  State v. Kessler, 289 Or 359, 362, 614 P2d 94
(1980).
B. Construction of Article I, Section 27
1. Text
Article I, section 27, has provided since statehood
that "[t]he people shall have the right to bear arms for the
defence of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be
kept in strict subordination to the civil power[.]"  In the
context of these cases, the specific wording of Article I,
section 27, raises two questions of construction:  (1) whether
the legislature constitutionally may exclude certain groups of
persons from the constitutional guarantee; and (2) whether the
guarantee extends to all, or to only some, purposes of arms
possession.
We answer the latter question quickly.  Article I,
section 27, clearly guarantees the right to bear arms for
purposes of defense -- specifically, "for the defence of
[the people] themselves, and the State."  See
Kessler, 289 Or at 371 (clarifying that the "defence of
themselves" wording includes right "to possess certain arms
for defense of person and property" (emphasis added)). 
Although the parties do not focus their arguments on that part of
the constitutional provision, the "defence" wording nonetheless
is significant, because it serves to limit the scope of the
constitutionally protected conduct at issue in these cases. 
Specifically, Article I, section 27, precludes the legislature
from infringing on the people's right to bear arms for purposes
of defense, but not for purposes other than defense.  It follows
that Article I, section 27, does not preclude the legislature
from prohibiting persons convicted of felonies -- or any other
persons -- from owning or possessing firearms for other than
defensive purposes.
We turn, then, to the central textual issue -- that is,
whether the phrase "[t]he people" set out in Article I, section
27, excludes felons.  Defendants argue simply that the drafters'
use of the broad phrase "[t]he people" demonstrates that Article
I, section 27, guarantees the right to bear arms to all
people, without exception.  The state advances two arguments in
response.  First, the state argues that, by using the collective
wording "[t]he people," instead of the more individual word
"person," the drafters intended the protection set out in Article
I, section 27, to provide a communal right of defense
through the bearing of arms, but not an individual right of
defense.  Alternatively, the state contends that, even if Article
I, section 27, guarantees an individual right respecting the
bearing of arms, the drafters of that provision nevertheless did
not intend to deprive the legislature of the authority to
regulate that right, including the authority to restrict certain
groups of persons from exercising the right.
As to the state's "communal defense" argument, this
court previously has resolved that question contrary to the
state's position here.  In Kessler, 289 Or at 365-68, 371,
as noted above and discussed in greater detail below, the court
reviewed the history of Article I, section 27, and concluded
that, in addition to providing for the defense of the community
as a whole, that provision also guaranteed individuals the right
to defend themselves using constitutionally protected arms. 
See id. at 371 (Article I, section 27, includes right to possess certain arms for personal defensive purposes).  As a contextual matter, we note that another provision in the Oregon Bill of Rights -- Article I, section 9 -- similarly protects individual rights through use of the words "the people." 
See Or Const, Art I, ;st 9 ("[n]o law shall violate the
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable search, or seizure"
(emphasis added)); State v. Campbell, 306 Or 157, 166, 759
P2d 1040 (1988) ("the people" wording in Article I, section 9,
protects individual privacy rights).  In sum, we adhere to the
reading of Article I, section 27, set out in Kessler and
therefore reject the state's argument that the drafters' use of
the words "[t]he people" limited the extent of the arms guarantee
to defense of the community as a whole. (5)
We turn to the state's argument that, notwithstanding
the drafters' use of the broad phrase "[t]he people" -- which, on
its face, appears to extend to all people -- the drafters
nonetheless did not intend to deprive the legislature of the
authority to regulate the bearing of arms, specifically the
authority to exclude certain groups of persons (such as felons)
from that constitutional guarantee.  The text of Article I,
section 27, itself is silent as to any intent respecting such
authority.  However, other constitutional provisions are helpful
to our textual analysis, as discussed below.  See generally
State v. Cavan, 337 Or 433, 441, 98 P3d 381 (2004) (when
construing text of original constitutional provision, court must
consider relevant context of that provision).
We begin with Article II, section 3 (1859), which, at
the time of statehood, provided:
  "No idiot, or insane person, shall be entitled to
the privileges of an elector, and the privilege of
an elector shall be forfeited by a conviction of any
crime which is punishable by imprisonment in the
penitentiary."
(Emphasis added.) (6)  By specifically removing persons
convicted of crimes punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary,
Article II, section 3 (1859), reflected an express intent on the
drafters' part to exclude that group of persons from the exercise
of a constitutional right -- specifically, the right to vote
"[i]n all elections, not otherwise provided for, by [the Oregon]
Constitution[.]"  Or Const, Art II, ;st 2 (1859).  By contrast,
Article I, section 27, contains no such expression of intent to
exclude those convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment in
the penitentiary -- the very group of persons at issue in these
cases.  See generally General Laws of Oregon, Crim Proc
Code, ch I, ;st 3, p 441 (Deady 1845-1864) (crimes carrying
penalty of imprisonment in penitentiary all deemed to be
felonies).  Although the state argues that the wording of Article
II, section 3 (1859), supports its contention that the drafters
generally did not view felons as equal to other citizens
respecting certain constitutional protections, the wording of
that provision actually cuts against the state's argument here: 
The drafters clearly knew how to exclude persons convicted of
certain felonies from the exercise of certain constitutional
rights and yet chose not to exclude those persons expressly from
the right to bear arms.  See generally Jory v.
Martin, 153 Or 278, 288, 56 P2d 1193 (1936) (absence of
wording that limited legislative action in provision at issue, in
light of presence of limiting wording in other constitutional
provisions, "indicates most strongly that it was not the
intention of [the] framers" to limit legislature's authority
respecting provision at issue). (7)
Another provision of the original constitution further
supports a more expansive reading of Article I, section 27. 
Original Article I, section 31 (1859), provided:
  "White foreigners who are, or may hereafter become
residents of this State[,] shall enjoy the same rights
in respect to the possession, enjoyment, and descent of
property as native born citizens.  And the
Legislative Assembly shall have power to restrain, and
regulate the immigration to this State of persons
not qualified to become Citizens of the United States."
(Emphasis added.) (8)  As to the immigration of certain persons
to Oregon, then, the drafters specifically chose to grant the
legislature express constitutional authority to "restrain[] and
regulate" that practice.  We further note that the drafters did
not derive Article I, section 31 (1859), from any other state
constitutional provision existing at the time.  Rather, the
drafters crafted it themselves and specifically added the passage
respecting the legislature's regulatory authority during the
course of the constitutional convention.  See Charles Henry
Carey, ed., The Oregon Constitution and Proceedings and
Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1857 317-18, 321,
469 (1926) (setting out suggested amendment and approval of
amendment respecting legislative authority to restrain and
regulate immigration; noting that no similar or identical
provisions appeared in any other state constitution).
Original Article I, section 31 (1859), is significant
to our analysis here, because, in that provision, the drafters
expressly included the same type of wording that the state
asserts in these cases they incorporated implicitly in
Article I, section 27.  As with Article II, section 3 (1859), the
drafters' choice of wording in Article I, section 31 (1859),
demonstrates that the drafters knew how to reserve regulatory
authority in the legislature within the context of the Oregon
Bill of Rights but made a different choice when they drafted and
approved Article I, section 27.
In sum, the text of Article I, section 27, expressly
delineates a limit respecting the intended purpose of the bearing
of arms (i.e., for defensive purposes); however, it does
not delineate any limit -- or express any intention respecting
legislative authority to delineate such a limit -- as to the
groups of persons falling within the constitutional guarantee. 
Other provisions of the Oregon Constitution of 1859, however,
demonstrate that the drafters knew how to exclude felons
expressly from the exercise of another constitutional right and
also knew how to reserve express regulatory authority in the
legislature respecting certain activity referred to within the
Bill of Rights.
  2. Case Law
This court has discussed the scope of the guarantee set
out in Article I, section 27, in a number of cases, which we
discuss below.
In two cases, this court appears to have adopted a
reading of Article I, section 27, that is consistent with the
state's reading of that provision in the cases before us now.  In
State v. Robinson, 217 Or 612, 343 P2d 886 (1959), this
court rejected a constitutional challenge under Article I,
section 27, to an earlier version of ORS 166.270, which, at the
time, prohibited unnaturalized foreign-born persons and certain
convicted felons from owning or possessing two general categories
of weapons:  firearms capable of concealment on the person,
including pistols and revolvers; and machine guns. (9)  Citing
a case from the Indiana Supreme Court, (10) the court summarily
concluded that Article I, section 27,
"permits reasonable regulation of the right to bear
arms and that accordingly legislation prohibiting the
carrying of concealed weapons is valid. * * * It is our
belief that ORS 166.270, at least so far as ex-convicts are concerned, is valid legislation."
217 Or at 619 (emphasis added).  In the course of reaching that
decision, the court also cited "the police power of the state" as
an appropriate basis for the statutory restriction:
"It is a well-recognized function of the legislature in
the exercise of the police power to restrain dangerous
practices and to regulate the carrying and use of
firearms and other weapons in the interest of public
safety."
Id. at 618 (internal quotation marks omitted).
In State v. Cartwright, 246 Or 120, 418 P2d 822
(1966), cert den, 386 US 937 (1967), this court again
upheld an earlier version of ORS 166.270, (11) in the context
of an as-applied constitutional challenge to that statute. 
Citing Robinson, the court first stated that,
"notwithstanding Article I, [s]ection 27, the state, in
the exercise of the police power, may provide that the
ownership or possession of certain firearms by an
exconvict is a public offense; for the [l]egislature
might reasonably conclude that, in the generality of
cases, a person who had demonstrated his disregard for
the laws of society by committing a felony against the
person or property of another would be more likely than
others to resort to force and violence and would be a
greater threat to the public safety when in possession
of a concealable firearm than when not."
Cartwright, 246 Or at 135.  The court next agreed with the
defendant that "there may be innocent possession of a concealable
firearm by an exconvict," id., and suggested that the
legislature might not have authority to criminalize arms
possession in certain defensive circumstances, citing
Hutchinson v. Rosetti, 24 Misc 2d 949, 205 NYS 2d 526
(1960) (holding ordinance that prohibited discharge of firearms
within city limits inapplicable to defendant who fired into
ceiling to scare off would-be assailants).  However, the court
ultimately concluded that the version of ORS 166.270 at issue was
not unconstitutional as applied in the defendant's circumstances
because the defendant had not been "faced with a sudden onslaught
and immediate threat of great bodily harm or possible death." 
Id. at 136.  The court explained that the defendant -- who
purportedly had possessed a pistol in his home to defend against
a forewarned robbery attempt -- instead could have utilized
methods of defense that the statute did not proscribe, such as
using a rifle or a shotgun, or notifying the police.  Id.
As noted, in both Robinson and Cartwright,
this court grounded its conclusions that the statutory
prohibition at issue did not contravene Article I, section 27, in
the "police power" doctrine, which generally seeks to determine
whether a legislative enactment reasonably "is in the interests
of the public health, safety, and general welfare."  Christian
et al. v. La Forge, 194 Or 450, 462, 242 P2d 797 (1952). 
However, this court in more recent years has explained that any
constitutional notion of the "police power" does not refer to an
independent source of legislative power itself; rather, it merely
represents the legislature's general plenary power to legislate. 
Dennehy v. Dept. of Rev., 305 Or 595, 604 n 3, 756 P2d 13
(1988); see also Eckles v. State of Oregon, 306 Or
380, 399, 760 P2d 846 (1988), cert dismissed, 490 US 1032
(1989) ("[T]he 'police power' is indistinguishable from the
state's inherent power to enact laws and regulations; the
existence of that power cannot explain the extent to which the
power is constitutionally limited.").  The court similarly has
clarified that "the state cannot avoid a constitutional command
by 'balancing' it against another of the state's interests or
obligations, such as protection of the 'vital interests' of the
people"; rather, any constitutional limitations on the state's
actions "must be found within the language or history" of the
constitution itself.  Eckles, 306 Or at 399.
It follows that this court's ultimate conclusions in
Robinson and Cartwright, respecting the legislature's
authority to prohibit certain groups of persons (there, certain
felons) from possessing certain types of firearms, erroneously
relied on the notion of "police power" as a source of
constitutional authority for legislative enactments.  In that
respect, then, those cases were wrongly analyzed.  However, the
court's decision in Cartwright as to the scope of the
guarantee set out under Article I, section 27, is helpful to the
extent that it confirms that the guarantee is limited to purposes
of defense.  The court in Cartwright further suggested --
although it came far from holding -- that the legislature might
not have authority to criminalize possession of arms in certain
defensive circumstances. (12)
This court next examined Article I, section 27, in
Kessler, 289 Or 359.  The defendant in that case challenged
his conviction under former ORS 166.510(1) (1979),
repealed by Or Laws 1985, chapter 709, section 4, which,
among other things, prohibited any person from possessing a
"slugging weapon."  289 Or at 361. (13)  The state had charged
and convicted the defendant under that statute after the police
had found two billy clubs in his home.
The court in Kessler first discussed the origins
of Article I, section 27, noting that it shared a common
historical background with other state constitutional arms
provisions drafted in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary
War era.  Id. at 363.  In the court's view, that common
background suggested three likely purposes of the Oregon
guarantee:  the historical preference for a citizen militia; "the
deterrence of government from oppressing unarmed segments of the
population"; and, as noted earlier, the protection of the
individual's right to bear arms to defend his or her person and
home.  Id. at 366-67.  The court further determined that
the term "arms" was intended to include "those weapons used by
settlers for both personal and military defense * * * [but] would
not have included cannon or other heavy ordnance not kept by
militiamen or private citizens."  Id. at 368.
After generally concluding that Article I, section 27,
"includes a right to possess certain arms for defense of person
and property," id. at 371, the court in Kessler held
that that constitutional provision protected the defendant's
possession of the billy clubs, after concluding that a billy club
qualified as the type of weapon "commonly used for personal
defense" at the time that the people adopted Article I, section
27, id. at 372.  The court narrowed its ultimate
conclusion, however, to the particular circumstances of the case
before it, specifically holding that Article I, section 27,
protected defendant's possession of billy clubs in his
home. (14)
In Blocker, 291 Or 255, this court addressed a
defendant's challenge to the same statute at issue in
Kessler, involving a conviction for possession outside the
home of a weapon qualifying as a billy club. (15)  The court
repeated its analysis from Kessler regarding the premise
that Article I, section 27, guaranteed the right of a person "to
bear arms for defense of self" and noted that the wording of
Article I, section 27, contained no limit or qualification
respecting the location of the weapon at issue.  Id. at
258-59.  The court further noted, citing Kessler, that
legislation that restricts the manner of possession or use of
certain weapons constitutionally may be permissible under Article
I, section 27. (16)  Id. at 259.  However, the court
clarified that Article I, section 27, prohibited the legislature
from enacting "a total proscription of the mere possession" of
"arms" that Article I, section 27, protects.  Id. at 260. 
The court concluded that, as in Kessler, the statute at
issue ran afoul of Article I, section 27, for that reason. 
Id.
As noted earlier in this opinion, the court in
Blocker then clarified the nature of the defendant's
particular constitutional challenge, in which he had argued that
the statute at issue was "vague and overbroad."  Id.
(internal quotation marks omitted).  After explaining the
difference between the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines, the
court stated:
"[D]efendant's attack on [former] ORS 166.510
[(1979)] as 'overbroad' impliedly asserted that [the
statute] reached beyond permissible limits to impinge
on a constitutionally protected right.  This could only
be the right to bear arms, although its source was not
identified, as it should have been. * * *
  "[W]e conclude that it is proper for us to
consider defendant's 'overbreadth' attack to mean that
the statute swept so broadly as to infringe rights that
it could not reach, which in this setting means the
right to possess arms guaranteed by [Article I,
section] 27."
Blocker, 291 Or at 261-62. (17)
Finally, in State v. Delgado, 298 Or 395, 692 P2d
610 (1984), this court again addressed a constitutional challenge
to former ORS 166.510(1) (1983), repealed by Or Laws
1985, chapter 709, section 4. (18)  That case concerned an
overbreadth challenge involving the possession of a switch-blade
knife -- which the defendant purportedly had carried "for
protection" -- discovered during a pat-down search.  298 Or at
397-98.  The court noted at the outset that, in the context of an
overbreadth challenge such as the one at issue before it, the
court "[o]rdinarily * * * would have no reason to go beyond the
facts described in the accusatory instrument to resolve whether
error was committed in overruling defendant's demurrer." 
Id. at 398 n 2.  In light of the factual record before it,
however, the court chose to note that, in the particular
circumstances at hand, "there [was] no evidence to support any
possible charge of an illegal intent to use the weapon or an
illegal use of the weapon."  Id.
Applying Kessler and Blocker, the court in
Delgado ultimately concluded that the switch-blade knife in
question qualified as an "arm" that Article I, section 27,
protected and that the statute that prohibited the mere
possession or carrying of a switchblade knife therefore was
facially unconstitutional.  Id. at 403-04.  In so holding,
the court again emphasized that "this decision does not mean
individuals have an unfettered right to possess or use
constitutionally protected arms in any way they please.  The
legislature may, if it chooses to do so, regulate possession and
use."  Id. at 403.
In sum, then, this court has held that Article I,
section 27, generally precludes the legislature from prohibiting
the mere possession of constitutionally protected arms by "any
person" but also has noted that the legislature permissibly may
regulate the manner of possession and the use of constitutionally
protected arms.  Further, although the court in Cartwright
ultimately rejected the defendant's as-applied challenge, the
court intimated in that case, without so holding, that the right
to bear arms may extend to certain defensive situations, even in
the case of possession by a felon.  Finally, the court's holdings
in Robinson and Cartwright suggest that the
legislature permissibly may prohibit the mere possession of a
constitutionally protected weapon based on one's status as a
felon, although this court has abandoned the "police power"
rationale underlying those cases.
3. Historical Circumstances
a. Oregon Constitutional Debate, Indiana
Constitutional Debate, and Other State
Constitutional Provisions
As to the adoption of Article I, section 27, itself,
the historical evidence of the drafters' intent -- or of the
people's intent in adopting the Oregon Constitution of 1859 -- is
limited.  There are no reported debates on that provision from
Oregon's constitutional convention, and the convention delegates
adopted it as the drafters originally proposed it.  Claudia
Burton and Andrew Grade, A Legislative History of the Oregon
Constitution of 1857 -- Part I (Articles I &amp; II), 37
Willamette L Rev 469, 545-46 (2001).
As this court explained in Kessler, 289 Or at
363, the drafters of the Oregon Constitution derived Article I,
section 27, almost verbatim from Article I, sections 32 and 33,
of the Indiana Constitution of 1851. (19)  W.C. Palmer, The
Sources of the Oregon Constitution, 5 Or L Rev 200, 202
(1926).  The convention debate respecting the adoption of the
Indiana Constitution of 1851 sheds some light on the question
whether or not the wording that the people of Oregon eventually
adopted as Article I, section 27, implicitly deprived the
legislature of the authority to regulate the bearing of arms. 
See generally Armatta v. Kitzhaber, 327 Or 250, 265,
959 P2d 49 (1998) (although not as helpful as history or case law
revealing the intent of framers of Oregon Constitution,
information demonstrating intent of framers of Indiana
Constitution of 1851 can be instructive when interpreting Oregon
constitutional provision patterned after Indiana Constitution).
By way of background, Article I, section 20, of the
Indiana Constitution of 1816 contained an arms provision that is
virtually identical to Article I, section 27, of the Oregon
Constitution. (20)  In 1833, the Indiana Supreme Court held
that it was permissible under that 1816 provision for the state
legislature to prohibit the wearing or carrying of concealed
weapons.  State v. Mitchell, 3 Blackf 229 (Ind 1833).
At the 1850 Indiana constitutional convention, a
standing committee proposed revised wording for that state's arms
provision; as originally introduced, the revised guarantee would
have provided that "[n]o law shall restrict the right of the
people to bear arms, whether in defence of themselves or of the
State."  Journal of the Convention of the People of the State
of Indiana to Amend the Constitution 188 (Ind Hist Bureau
1936).  After a second reading, a delegate asked whether the
proposed wording was intended to permit or prohibit the wearing
of concealed weapons.  2 Report of the Debates and Proceedings
of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the
State of Indiana 1850 1385 (1850).  Another delegate responded
that, if the drafters wished to reserve such power in the
legislature, then they must revise the original wording of
Article I, section 20, of the 1816 constitution; (21) "For if
it were declared by Constitutional provision that the people
should have the right to bear arms, no law of the Legislature
could take away that right."  Id.  Suggested amendments
then were offered and rejected, to the following effect: (1)
replacing the words "[n]o law shall restrict the right of the
people" with "no law shall deprive the people of the right"; (2)
inserting the words "in an open and unconcealed manner"
respecting the bearing of arms; and (3) striking all words after
"arms" (that is, all "defence" references).  Id.
When the provision again came up for consideration, a
delegate moved that it be amended to read as follows:  "No law
shall be passed restricting the right of the people to carry
visible arms."  Journal of the Convention of the People of the
State of Indiana to Amend the Constitution at 580.  As the
minutes from the debate report it:
"As the section now stood, [the delegate] thought
that it gave a direct license to every desperado and
ruffian in the State to carry concealed weapons.  He
did not think, however, that this was the opinion of
the Convention, or that they would restrict the
Legislature from passing any law for carrying concealed
weapons."
2 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for
the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Indiana 1850
at 1391.  Another delegate then moved to strike the proposed
wording and to insert the wording from Article I, section 20, of
the Indiana Constitution of 1816, that is, that "the people have
a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the
State[.]"  Id.   According to the minutes, that delegate
"was desirous whenever the words of the old
Constitution were unobjectionable, and had received
judicial construction, to retain them in the old form. 
He was opposed to the reported section from a fear it
might possibly be so construed as to deprive the
Legislature of power to prohibit the carrying of
concealed weapons.  The practice of carrying concealed
weapons was one of the most dastardly, odious, and
murderous practices that was ever tolerated in the
civilized world, and unquestionably there was not a
gentleman on that floor who would not feel shocked at
the idea that no such prohibition could be passed."
Id.  The proposed revision was recommitted for the purpose
of replacing the proposed wording with the original 1816 wording. 
The convention eventually adopted the provision in that form as
Article I, section 32.  Journal of the Convention of the
People of the State of Indiana to Amend the Constitution at
873.
The foregoing debate is helpful to our analysis here,
because it demonstrates that the framers of the Indiana
Constitution of 1851 -- while generally protective of the right
to bear arms -- nonetheless did not intend that the right extend
so far as to preclude legislative regulation respecting the
carrying of concealed weapons.  Stated differently, in rejecting
proposed wording that expressly prohibited legislative
restriction, and in adopting the wording previously construed in
Mitchell, the drafters of the Indiana Constitution of 1851
demonstrably did not intend to deprive the state legislature of
the authority to regulate a particular aspect of the right to
bear arms that related to public safety.  That, in turn, supports
this court's conclusion in Kessler that the guarantee set
out in Article I, section 27, of the Oregon Constitution was
subject to certain regulatory authority on the legislature's part
-- at the least, the authority to prohibit the carrying of
concealed weapons and, possibly, a broader authority to act to
prevent threats to public safety.  However, the Indiana history
does not conclusively demonstrate whether that regulatory
authority extends to exclude certain groups of persons from the
constitutional guarantee.
As to the basis of the arms provision of the Indiana
Constitutional of 1816, we note that Indiana patterned that
provision on the Ohio Constitution of 1802 and the Kentucky
Constitution of 1792. (22)  Robert Twomley, The Indiana Bill
of Rights, 20 Ind LJ 211, 212 (1944).  The Ohio and Kentucky
provisions, in turn, likely were patterned on the Pennsylvania
Constitution of 1790. (23)  See Steven H.
Steinglass and Gino J. Scarselli, The Ohio State Constitution: 
A Reference Guide 16 (2004); Robert M. Ireland, The
Kentucky State Constitution:  A Reference Guide 2 (1999). 
Pennsylvania, among other states, patterned its expression of the
right to bear arms on the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which
we discuss further below.  See Kessler, 289 Or at
363-65 (discussing origins of right to bear arms).
The Kentucky Constitution of 1792 generated what
appears to be the first appellate decision construing a state
constitutional arms provision.  Article XII of that constitution
provided in part that "the right of the citizens to bear arms in
defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned."  In
1822, the Kentucky Court of Appeals held that that provision
prohibited legislation that criminalized the carrying of
concealed weapons, reasoning that such legislation
unconstitutionally restrained the citizenry's right to bear arms:
"The right [to bear arms] existed at the adoption of
the constitution; it had then no limits short of the
moral power of the citizens to exercise it, and it in
fact consisted in nothing else but in the liberty of
the citizens to bear arms.  Diminish that liberty,
therefore, and you necessarily restrain the right; and
such is the diminution and restraint, which the act in
question most indisputably imports, by prohibiting the
citizens wearing weapons in a manner which was lawful
to wear them when the constitution was adopted. * * *
[I]n principle, there is no difference between a law
prohibiting the wearing of concealed arms, and a law
forbidding the wearing such as are exposed; and if the
former be unconstitutional, the latter must be so
likewise."
Bliss v. Commonwealth, 2 Litt 90, 92, 12 Ky 90 (1822).  The
people of Kentucky thereafter amended their constitution
expressly to allow prohibitions on the carrying of concealed
weapons.  See Ky Const of 1850, Art XIII, ;st 25 ("[T]he
rights of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and
the State shall not be questioned; but the general assembly may
pass laws to prevent persons from carrying concealed
arms."). (24)
The protective view of the state constitutional arms
guarantee expressed in Bliss is rare; to the contrary, most
courts addressing challenges to statutory restrictions have
concluded that state constitutional arms guarantees generally are
subject to reasonable restraints.  See generally John
Levin, The Right to Bear Arms:  The Development of the
American Experience, 48 Chi-Kent L Rev, 148, 159 (1971) (so
noting). (25)  Most significantly for our purposes here, as
discussed above, the Indiana Supreme Court construed Article I,
section 20, of the Indiana Constitution of 1816 -- which was
virtually identical to Article I, section 27, of the Oregon
Constitution -- to allow legislative prohibition of the wearing
or carrying of concealed weapons.  Mitchell, 3 Blackf at
229. (26)
As to the wording of the various state constitutional
arms provisions in effect in 1859 -- all of which theoretically
were available as resources to the drafters of the Oregon
Constitution -- we note that none of those provisions expressly
prohibited felons or criminals from possessing arms.  Further,
none expressly demonstrated any intent respecting legislative
authority to regulate the bearing of arms, although one -- the
Kentucky Constitution of 1850 -- expressly authorized the general
assembly to regulate the carrying of concealed arms. (27) 
Notwithstanding the absence of express provisions, as discussed
above, a number of state courts had construed their
constitutional provisions to authorize such restrictions.  Most
significantly for our purposes here, the Indiana Supreme Court
had construed its 1816 arms provision to allow legislative
restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons,
notwithstanding the absence of any wording to that effect, and
the 1850 Indiana constitutional convention delegates recognized
the necessity for such a restriction when they incorporated the
1816 provision into the Indiana Constitution of 1851. 
b. Oregon Territorial Laws and Statutes at
Statehood
Few statutes enacted by the Oregon territorial
legislature or by the Legislative Assembly soon after statehood
in 1859 related to the regulation of firearms.  However, some
statutes are helpful to our analysis as to whether the guarantee
set out in Article I, section 27, carried with it legislative
regulatory authority respecting the possession of arms as to
certain groups of persons.  See generally Lakin v. Senco
Products, Inc., 329 Or 62, 71-72, 987 P2d 463 (1999)
(examining relevant territorial laws to discern framers' intent
respecting particular constitutional provision); Jory, 153
Or at 294-96 (examining legislative actions at time of statehood
as demonstrative of drafters' intent respecting legislature's
constitutional power to increase salaries of governmental
officials).
At the outset, we note that the right to bear arms was
incorporated as part of the Organic Law of the Provisional
Government, adopted by a vote of the people of Oregon in 1845. 
Article I, section 5, of the Organic Law provided, in part, that
"[n]o person shall be deprived of the right of bearing arms in
his own defence[.]"  Organic Law of the Provisional Government of
Oregon, Art I, ;st 5, p 59-60 (Deady 1845-1864).  No statute
existing at statehood operated to restrict that right as to any
groups of persons, including criminals, minors, vagrants, or the
insane.  Within the first years after statehood, the only statute
that imposed a firearm restriction prohibited selling or giving
any firearms or ammunition to any Native Americans without the
authority of the United States.  General Laws of Oregon, Crim
Code, ch XLIX, ;st 654, p 564-65 (Deady 1845-1864) (effective
October 1864). (28)
In 1869, 10 years after the adoption of the Oregon
Constitution, the legislature enacted a statutory right as to
certain firearms for white male citizens, with no exceptions:
"* * * Every white male citizen of this state
above the age of sixteen years, shall be entitled to
have, hold, and keep, for his own use and defence, the
following firearms, to wit:  either or any one of the
following named guns, and one revolving pistol:  a
rifle, shotgun (double or single barrel), yager, or
musket; the same to be exempt from execution, in all
cases, under the laws of Oregon.
  "* * * No officer, civil or military, or other
person, shall take from or demand of the owner any
firearms mentioned in this chapter, except where the
services of the owner are also required to keep the
peace or defend the state."
General Laws of Oregon, Misc Laws, ch XXII, ;st 1-2, p 613 (Deady
&amp; Lane 1843-1872) (effective October 1868).  Relatedly, Oregon's
early militia laws did not exempt felons or other ex-convicts
from voluntary militia service.  Laws of Oregon 1855-1856, 7th
Regular Session (1855-56), An Act to Organize the Militia, p 55-63 (setting out no exceptions to military service) (effective
January 1856); Oregon Laws 1856-1858, 8th Regular Session (1856-57), An Act to Amend an Act Entitled "An Act to Organize the
Militia," p 34 (effective December 1856) (exempting from militia
service persons "subject to bear arms" under original militia law
who are conscientiously opposed to bearing arms); General Laws of
Oregon, Misc Laws, ch XXXVI, ;st 4, p 666 (Deady &amp; Lane 1843-1872) (exempting persons exempt under federal law, ministers,
various state officers, and clerks in telegraph offices, "and no
other persons") (effective October 1862).
Most statutes that pertained to firearms at statehood
or shortly thereafter were directed at prohibiting dueling and
increasing punishment for crimes that involved the use of
dangerous weapons.  See, e.g., General Laws of Oregon, Crim
Code, ch XLIII, ;st 524, p 530-31 (Deady 1845-1864) (crime to
engage in, or to challenge someone to, duel with deadly weapon)
(effective October 1864); id. at ;st 529, p 531 (assault
and robbery while armed with dangerous weapon) (effective October
1864); id. at ;st 532, p 532 (assault while armed with
dangerous weapon) (effective October 1864); Oregon Laws 1857-1858, 9th Regular Session (1858), An Act to prevent the escape of
Penitentiary Convicts, p 57-58 (death penalty to be imposed on
territorial convict who, with deadly weapon, strikes, wounds,
stabs, shoots, or shoots at penitentiary personnel or sheriff)
(effective January 1858).  The legislature did not act to
prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons until 1885 and did not
act to limit the possession of firearms by felons -- or the
possession of certain arms by any persons -- until 1925. 
See Laws of Oregon 1885, An Act to prevent Persons from
Carrying Concealed Weapons and to provide for the Punishment of
the same, ;st;st 1-4, p 33 (enacting original statutory
prohibition on carrying of concealed weapons); General Laws of
Oregon 1925, ch 260, ;st;st 2, 5 (enacting predecessor statutes
to former ORS 166.250 (1953) (ultimately held
unconstitutional in Kessler, Blocker, and
Delgado) and ORS 166.270).
As to the rights of felons or ex-convicts generally,
the following provisions from Chapter LIII of the Criminal Code
of 1864 are informative:
"§ 701.  A judgment of imprisonment in the
penitentiary for any term less than for life, suspends
all the civil rights of the person so sentenced, and
forfeits all public offices and all private trusts,
authority or power during the term or duration of such
imprisonment.
  "§ 702.  A person sentenced to imprisonment in
the penitentiary for life, is thereafter deemed civilly
dead.
  "§ 703.  The person of a convict sentenced to
imprisonment in the penitentiary is under the
protection of the law, and any injury to his person not
authorized by law, is punishable in the same manner as
if he was not convicted or sentenced.
  "* * * * *
  "§ 706.  No conviction of any person for crime,
works any forfeiture of any property, except in cases
where the same is expressly provided by law; but in
all cases of the commission or attempt to commit a
felony, the state has a lien, from the time of such
commission or attempt, upon all the property of the
defendant, for the purpose of satisfying any
judgment which may be given against him for any fine on
account thereof, and for the costs and disbursements in
the proceedings against him for such crime."
General Laws of Oregon, Criminal Code, ch LIII, ;st;st 701-703,
706, p 575-76 (Deady 1845-1864) (effective October 1864)
(emphasis added); see also Laws of Oregon 1858-1859, 10th
Regular Session (1858-59), An Act to Amend an Act to create a
Lien upon the Property of Criminals in certain cases, p 43-44
(effective January 1859) (setting out enactment creating lien on
property of "all persons who shall be convicted of any crime"). 
Thus, as to the rights of persons convicted of felonies, the
first Oregon Criminal Code provided a distinction between those
persons sentenced to the penitentiary for life (thereafter deemed
"civilly dead") and those sentenced for less than life.  As to
that latter group -- which presently would include "felons" as at
issue here -- imprisonment operated to suspend their civil
liberties during the course of that imprisonment but not to
terminate those liberties.  Notably, that statutory provision
made no exception respecting the bearing of arms.  Further,
although the state automatically had a lien on the property of
such persons dating to territorial law, the legislature soon
after statehood exempted firearms from execution under the
statutory guarantee, set out earlier, that granted all males
older than 16 years the right to possess certain firearms. 
See General Laws of Oregon, Misc Laws, ch XXII, ;st 1-2, p
613 (Deady &amp; Lane 1843-1872) (effective October 1868).
Additional territorial and early statutes, to some
extent, addressed other topics relating to felons or ex-convicts. 
For example, an 1859 law disqualified persons convicted of
felonies or misdemeanors involving moral turpitude from serving
as jurors.  Laws of the State of Oregon, First Extra Session, ;st
1 (1859), p 14.  However, the original territorial laws did not
prohibit felons or ex-convicts from voting.  See An Act to
Establish the Territorial Government of Oregon, 9 Stat 323, ;st 5
(1848), reprinted in General Laws of Oregon, p 54 (Deady &amp;
Lane 1843-1872). (29)  Further, although the territorial and
early state legislatures developed a comprehensive statutory
framework governing operation of the state penitentiary and the
monitoring of inmates, nothing in the statutes at statehood or
shortly thereafter created any system for monitoring ex-convicts
after their release from the penitentiary. (30)  Rather, the
only statutory provisions pertaining to the discharge of inmates
concerned payment upon discharge.  See General Laws of
Oregon, Misc Laws, ch XLIV ;st;st 26-27, p 704 (Deady &amp; Lane
1843-1872) ($5 paid to convicts upon discharge, plus $0.50 for
each merit mark, subject to forfeiture for damages caused while
incarcerated) (effective October 1864).
Finally, we note that, unlike the state of the law in
colonial America (discussed below), early Oregon statutes imposed
the death penalty for only first-degree murder and certain crimes
committed during incarceration in the penitentiary.  See
Statutes of Oregon 1855, ch III, ;st 1-3, p 208 (death penalty
for first-degree murder; imprisonment for second-degree murder);
Oregon Laws 1857-1858, 9th Regular Session (1858), An Act to
prevent the escape of Penitentiary Convicts, p 57-58 (death
penalty to be imposed on territorial convict who, with deadly
weapon, strikes, wounds, stabs, shoots, or shoots at penitentiary
personnel or sheriff) (effective January 1858); see also
generally Don B. Kates, Jr., Handgun Prohibition and the
Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich L Rev 204,
266 (1983) (felons at colonial times punished "with automatic
forfeiture of all goods, usually accompanied by death").  As to
the types of laws qualifying as felonies, Oregon's first criminal
code identified certain crimes as felonies that did not involve
any injury to person or property.  See, e.g., General Laws
of Oregon, Crim Code, ch XLVI, ;st;st 616-18, p 554 (Deady 1845-1864) (felony to bribe Oregon voter or to receive such bribe)
(effective 1864); General Laws of Oregon, Crim Code, ch V, ;st
632-35, p 429 (Deady &amp; Lane 1843-1872) (felony to induce or
persuade voter from another state to vote in Oregon or to induce
Oregon voter to stay away from polls) (effective 1870).
In short, like the Oregon Constitution of 1859, the
Oregon statutes in effect both before and shortly after statehood
limited the rights of felons in some circumstances (e.g.,
in suspending civil liberties while imprisoned and in
disqualifying felons from serving on juries).  However, nothing
in those statutes expressly provided for the disarmament of
felons after release from the penitentiary.  Further, the
statutes in effect at that time expressly protected arms
possession, both in prohibiting deprivation of the right
generally and in guaranteeing the right of all white males over
16 years old to possess certain firearms.
c. English History
As discussed above, Article I, section 27, shares a
common historical background with other early state
constitutional provisions that is rooted in the English
understanding of the right to bear arms.  This court discussed
that history at length in Kessler, 289 Or at 363.  Below,
we summarize this court's discussion from Kessler and add
further discussion that bears on the issue before us now.
Before the late seventeenth century, bearing arms in
England was considered to be a duty, rather than a right.  Joyce
Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms:  The Origins of an Anglo-American Right 1 (1994).  The Crown relied on citizen-soldiers
to defend the country and to provide local law enforcement. 
Thus, the bearing of arms was part of a citizen's civic duty to
defend himself and his family, property, neighbors, and
community, as well as to serve in the militia.  Id. at 2-3. 
Despite that duty, however, the Crown imposed numerous
restrictions on arms ownership, as discussed below.
In the sixteenth century, when firearm use became more
common, the Crown "attempted to place guns under special
control," Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms at 9, by enacting
statutes that "limit[ed] ownership and use of two concealable
weapons frequently employed in crime, the handgun and the
crossbow."  Id. (31)  The Crown also imposed other
restrictions on firearm use, such as restricting shooting near
towns and restricting the type of shot that could be used. 
Id. at 10.  In the seventeenth century, Parliament often
disarmed Catholics during times of religious tension, because it
regarded them as potential subversives.  See id. at
11.  Similar acts of disarmament occurred during the reign of
Charles II.  Id. at 92.
In 1685, James II, a Catholic, acceded to the English
throne.  He established a strong standing army, which he
quartered in private homes, Kessler, 289 Or at 363-64,
which traditionally had included criminals and societal outcasts,
David B. Kopel, It Isn't About Duck Hunting:  The British
Origins of the Right to Arms, 93 Mich L Rev 1333, 1340-41
(1995) (citing Lois G. Schwoerer, "No Standing Armies!" The
Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England 11, 22
(1974)). (32)  James II also rigorously sought to disarm his
subjects, with a particular aim toward disarming those who
opposed his religious policies.  He did so by strictly enforcing
earlier firearms restrictions, including those set out in a
series of game acts, which effectively disarmed those of little
economic means, (33) and in the then-dormant 1328 Statute of
Northampton, which forbade the carrying of arms in fairs and
markets, among other things.  See Malcolm, To Keep and
Bear Arms at 102-104.  In 1686, James II charged a former
sheriff, who had fallen out of political favor, with wrongful use
of a firearm under the dormant 1328 statute.  A jury, however,
acquitted the former sheriff, and the King's Bench "specifically
recognized a 'general Connivance to Gentlemen to ride armed for
their security.'"  Id. at 104-05.  In the words of Malcolm,
the King's Bench "was not prepared to approve the use of [the
1328] statute to disarm law-abiding citizens."  Id.
In his continued efforts to disarm the critics of the
Crown -- particularly Protestants -- James II strictly enforced
the Militia Act of 1662, which permitted the disarmament of
subjects at the militia officers' discretion.  See id. at
115-16, 118; Kates, 82 Mich L Rev at 238-39 (quoting Militia Act,
which empowered officials "to search for and seize all arms in
the custody or possession of any person or persons whom [the
officials] shall judge dangerous to the peace of the kingdom"). 
The Protestants revolted in 1688 in the "Glorious Revolution,"
deposed James II, and offered his Protestant daughter, Mary, and
her husband, William of Orange, the Crown, on the condition that
they sign a new Declaration of Rights.  Kessler, 289 Or at
364.  William then summoned a "Convention Parliament" to draft
the declaration (discussed further below); William and Mary
ultimately signed the Declaration of Rights of 1689, which was
later enacted as a statute, id., and which is commonly
referred to as the Bill of Rights of 1689.
The Bill of Rights of 1689 listed the abuses of James
II and declared the rights of the people in response to those
abuses.  See Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms at 117-18.  In it, the convention transformed the "duty" to bear arms
into a "right" of the people, by including a right-to-bear-arms
provision. (34)  The convention included that provision because
of the outrage toward the Crown's disarmament of "law-abiding"
and "good Subjects" during the seventeenth century as a political
means to enhance the Crown.  Id. at 115-18; see also
Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed:  The Evolution
of a Constitutional Right 45 (1st ed 1984) (setting out
provision of English Bill of Rights that identified James II's
disarmament abuses as follows:  "By causing several good
Subjects, being Protestants, to be disarmed * * *" (quoting
English Bill of Rights, 1 W &amp; M, 2d sess, ch 2 (1689) (emphasis
added)).  The arms provision of the Bill of Rights -- which was
limited to the Protestant targets of James II's disarmament
policies -- set out the right as follows:
"that the subjects which are Protestants may have arms
for their defence suitable to their conditions and as
allowed by law." (35)
English Bill of Rights, 1 W &amp; M, 2d sess, ch 2 (1689),
reprinted in Bernard Schwartz, 1 The Bill of Rights: A
Documentary History 43 (1971). 
As noted, disarmament policies in sixteenth and
seventeenth century England typically concerned political and
religious dissidents, whom the Crown viewed as a threat, and
subjects of little economic means.  We have found no reference to
any English laws at the time that operated specifically to disarm
criminals; indeed, such persons participated in the standing
armies that the Crown quartered in private homes.  However, the
Convention Parliament that adopted the Bill of Rights of 1689
noted their outrage toward the disarmament of "law-abiding"
citizens and "good Subjects" (such as religious dissidents),
suggesting that disarmament of lawbreakers was not necessarily an
underlying concern that the Convention Parliament intended the
arms guarantee to address.  Further, as early as the sixteenth
century, the Crown had imposed restrictions on arms typically
used in crimes, and, according to some seventeenth-century
English writings, those who had no interest in preserving the
public peace had difficulty obtaining arms.  See Robert E.
Shalhope, The Armed Citizen in the Early Republic, 49 Law &amp;
Contemp Probs 125, 130 (Winter 1986); (36) see also
Markus Dirk Dubber, Policing Possession:  The War on Crime and
the End of Criminal Law, 91 J Crim L &amp; Criminology 829, 919
(2001) (noting that felons subject to current arms-possession
restrictions "resemble the targets of vagrancy laws, who also
were considered far too dangerous to possess a gun," citing
State v. Hogan, 58 NE 572 (Ohio 1900)).  Finally, "[w]ith
arms readily available in their homes, Englishmen were
theoretically prepared at all times to chase down felons in
response to the hue and cry, or to assemble together as an
impropmptu army in case of foreign invasion of their shire." 
Kates, 82 Mich L Rev at 214-15.
d. Colonial American History
The American colonists believed that they retained all
the same rights as Englishmen, including the right to bear arms. 
Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms at 138.  In his
Commentaries on the Laws of England, widely read and relied
on as a source of law in the colonies, Malcolm, To Keep and
Bear Arms at 142, William Blackstone wrote that the right to
bear arms was required -- together with other rights involving
the administration of justice and the application for redress of
injury -- to secure the absolute, primary individual rights of
personal security, personal liberty, and private property,
id. at 143. (37)
Many early colonial statutes required the citizenry to
arm itself, largely "for the defense of their isolated and
endangered communities."  Levin, 48 Chi-Kent L Rev at 148; see
also id. at 148-49 (setting out early colonial statutes
requiring possession or carrying of arms); Emery, 28 Harv L Rev
at 474-75 ("In the American colonies, with their small revenues
and beset as they were with savage and other enemies, it was
deemed necessary that every man of military age and capacity
should provide himself with arms and be ready to bear them in
defense of himself and his neighbors and the colony at large."). 
Additionally, as with community defense in England, the colonists
were expected to "hunt[] criminals down when the hue and cry went
up, and in more formal posse and militia patrol duties, under the
control of public officials."  Randy E. Barnett and Don B. Kates,
Under Fire:  The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45
Emory LJ 1139, 1217 (1996). (38)
Notably, however, the colonists did not treat the
common-law right to bear arms as absolute and, instead, regulated
firearm use and ownership.  Such restrictions generally fell into
three categories:  (1) those prohibiting gun ownership or the
carrying of arms by Native Americans and persons of African
descent; (2) those prohibiting hunting or shooting near urban
areas; and (3) those prohibiting the carrying or brandishing of
arms so as to cause fear. See Kates, 82 Mich L Rev at 241 n
156); see also Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms at 140
(colonies restricted use of firearms in crowded places and
prohibited riding with firearms with intent to terrify); Levin,
48 Chi-Kent L Rev at 149-50 (colonies tried to keep arms out of
the "wrong hands" by forbidding slaves and Native Americans from
carrying certain weapons and regulated firearms use to protect
people and livestock). (39)  It does not appear, however, that
any laws of the colonial era expressly prohibited criminals from
owning firearms or otherwise provided for the disarmament of that
group.  Further, early colonial militia laws do not appear to
have exempted criminals from the military ranks; indeed, such
laws required that all who qualified for military service provide
their own arms.  See, e.g., The Statutes at Large; Being a
Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of
the Legislature in the Year 1619, XII General Assembly of 1785,
ch 1, ;st III, p 10, 12 (all free male persons between 18 and 50
years of age, with exceptions based on occupation, required to
report for militia service "armed, equipped, and accoutered")
(Cochrand ed. 1823).
After the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763,
the colonists no longer believed that they could rely on the
English Bill of Rights.  That war had brought many British troops
to the colonies, and, following the war, George III maintained a
standing army in American cities and ordered that the troops be
quartered in private homes.  The colonists viewed the standing
army as an instrument of oppression and, therefore, drafted state
constitutions during the Revolutionary War period that included
arms provisions and that prohibited the keeping of standing
armies during times of peace.  See Kessler, 289 Or at
364-65; see also Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms at
143-47.
Following the adoption of those constitutions, the
states continued to regulate firearm use and possession,
including the types of regulations discussed earlier, i.e.,
general disarmament of Native Americans and persons of African
descent; prohibitions on the carrying of concealed weapons and
the carrying of firearms in certain places; and prohibitions on
carrying weapons with intent to terrorize the public. (40) 
Other regulatory laws at the time of the Revolutionary War
concerned the use of firearms as part of militia service and the
safe storage of gunpowder.  See generally Saul Cornell and
Nathan DeDino, A Well Regulated Right:  The Early American
Origins of Gun Control, 73 Fordham L Rev 508-12 (2004)
(discussing such regulations).
Another type of arms restriction that emerged at the
time of the Revolutionary War involved the disarmament of persons
who refused to swear oaths of allegiance to a state or to the
United States.  See id. at 506-08 (discussing loyalty
oaths).  For example, the state of Pennsylvania -- the
constitutional arms provision of which likely was a genesis for
Oregon's provision, see \r1\ Or at \r1\ (slip op at 35) (so
explaining) -- required any person who "'refuse[d] or neglect[ed]
to take the oath or affirmation' of allegiance to the state" to
"deliver up his arms to agents of the state" and thereafter was
prohibited from "carry[ing] any arms about his person or
keep[ing] any arms or ammunition in his 'house or elsewhere.'" 
Cornell and DeDino, 73 Fordham L Rev at 506 (quoting 1777-1778 Pa
Laws, ;st5, p 126,).  "Such a broad provision effectively
eliminated the opportunity for someone to violently protest the
actions of the Pennsylvania government or defend himself with a
firearm."  Id.  Similarly, Massachusetts passed an act
"that disarmed 'such Persons as are notoriously disaffected to
the Cause of America, or who refuse to associate to defend by
Arms the United American Colonies.'"  Id. at 507 (quoting
1775-1776 Mass Acts, ch VII at 31).  The Massachusetts law
exempted Quakers by offering them a different form of declaration
to accommodate their religion.  Thus, as two authoring scholars
put it, a Quaker's "right  * * * to practice his religion
outweighed the state's interest in its preferred test of
allegiance," while the right to bear arms "did not outweigh the
state's interest in maintaining security through disarmament of
those considered dangerous to the state.  Instead, the state's
interest in public safety dominated."  Id.
As to the early colonial and state militia laws,
despite some commentators' assertions, we have been unable to
locate any statutes that explicitly excluded criminals from
membership in the militia; (41) to the contrary, early militia
statutes that we have reviewed contained no exemption for felons
or criminals, although they contained a litany of other
exemptions.  See \r1\ Or at \r1\ (slip op at 59)
(discussing early Virginia statutes); Laws and Resolves of
Massachusetts 1784-85, ch 55, An Act for Regulating and Governing
the Militia of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1785), p 140,
151-52 (militia service required as to able-bodied men ages 16 to
60; exemptions based on occupation and status as "Quaker[],
negro[], Indian[], and mulatto[]"); Laws of New York, ch 25, an
Act to regulate the militia, p 220, 225 (1786) (militia service
required as to able-bodied men ages 16 to 45; exemptions based on
occupation and Quaker status only).
Finally, we could find no reference to laws adopted
before the drafting of the Oregon Constitution that specifically
prohibited groups such as felons from possessing firearms or
other weaponry.  We note, however,  that scholars have written
that colonial America often punished felonies by death, see,
e.g., Kates, 82 Mich L Rev at 266 (so stating), which early
Oregon statutes did not do.
e. Second Amendment to the United States
Constitution
The American colonial experience respecting the right
to bear arms culminated in the adoption, in 1791, of the Second
Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the people to
keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." (42)
We note, first, that most Second Amendment scholarship
-- as well as some recent federal case law -- consists of a
lively, even acrimonious, debate as to whether that amendment
guarantees an individual right to bear arms (the more current
prevailing academic view), a "collective" right that extends to
only the states (the more traditional view), or some other
"quasi-collective" or "civic" right.  See, e.g., United
States v. Emerson, 270 F3d 203, 220, 260 (5th Cir 2001),
cert den, 536 US 907 (2002); Stephen P. Halbrook, What
the Framers Intended:  A Linguistic Analysis of the Right to
"Bear Arms", 49 Law &amp; Contemp Probs 151, 162 (Winter 1986);
Kates, 82 Mich L Rev at 273 (all adopting or advocating
individual-right view); Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F3d 1052,
1060-61, 1086-87 (9th Cir 2002), cert den, 540 US 1046
(2003); David C. Williams, Civic Republicanism and the Citizen
Militia:  The Terrifying Second Amendment, 101 Yale LJ 551
(1991); Kenneth Lasson, Blunderbuss Scholarship:  Perverting
the Original Intent and Plain Meaning of the Second Amendment,
32 U Balt L Rev 127 (2003) (all adopting or advocating
collective-right view); Cornell and DeDino, 73 Fordham L Rev at
491 (advocating "civic right" view, that is, a right "exercised
by citizens, not individuals * * *, who act together in a
collective manner, for a distinctly public purpose: 
participation in a well-regulated militia").  Much of that debate
is not useful to our inquiry, because, as this court previously
has recognized, Article I, section 27, of the Oregon Constitution
guarantees an individual right.  See Kessler, 289 Or
at 371 ("[W]e hold that Article I, section 27, of the Oregon
Constitution includes a right to possess certain arms for defense
of person and property.").  However, while we are mindful that
that debate has shaped much of the research that is available to
us in addressing the more particular question presented in these
cases, (43) some of the available scholarship and commentary --
which sheds light on the general American view of the right to
bear arms in the late eighteenth century -- bears on our
analysis, as discussed below.
We begin by observing, as do many scholars, that a
number of states proposed amendments to the original United
States Constitution before its adoption in 1788 -- and 13 years
before the ratification of the Bill of Rights -- that would have
guaranteed a right to bear arms.  In particular, scholars often
quote a proposed amendment from the dissent of the minority of
the Pennsylvania ratifying convention as supporting the notion
that the government constitutionally may disarm criminals.  That
proposed amendment provided:
"That the people have a right to bear arms * * *
and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or
any of them unless for crimes committed, or real
danger of public injury from individuals[.]" (44)
The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the
Convention of the State of Pennsylvania to their Constituents,
1787, reprinted in Schwartz, 2 Bill of Rights at
665 (emphasis added).  We agree that that proposed provision --
had the framers adopted it -- expressly would have permitted the
disarming of criminals.  However, other proposed amendments to
the United States Constitution were not so explicit.
For example, the Massachusetts ratifying convention
recommended an amendment that provided, "And that the said
Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress * * * to
prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable
citizens, from keeping their own arms[.]"  Debates and
Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts Held in the Year 1788 p 78-92 (1856),
reprinted in Schwartz, 2 Bill of Rights at 681
(emphasis added).  Although we could view the reference to
"peaceable citizens" as the equivalent of "law-abiding citizens"
(thereby suggesting permissible disarmament of criminals), we
just as easily could view that reference as a declaration that
the colonial American citizenry -- as opposed to the Native
Americans who lived among them -- were peaceable.  New Hampshire
also proposed an amendment, which provided that "Congress shall
never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in
Actual Rebellion."  Journal of the Proceedings of the
Convention of the State of New Hampshire Whom Adopted the Federal
Constitution (1788), reprinted in Miscellaneous
Documents and Reports Relating to New Hampshire at Different
Periods 18 (1877), reprinted in Schwartz, 2 Bill of
Rights at 761 (emphasis added).  As with the "peaceable
citizens" reference in the Massachusetts proposal, the phrase
"Actual Rebellion" is ambiguous at best respecting any reference
to common criminals; more likely, it referred to those involved
in treasonist activities against the government. (45)
In short, the collective wording of the early proposed
-- and defeated -- amendments to the United States Constitution
did not clearly confirm a general understanding among the
founders that criminals or felons were excluded from any
traditional right to bear arms or that the government otherwise
constitutionally could disarm them.
As to the drafting of the Second Amendment itself,
scholars generally agree that the framers viewed the
constitutional arms guarantee as fundamental to their new form of
government.  Specifically, the framers viewed citizen arms
possession as a critical check on governmental tyranny and as
necessary protection against outlaws and enemy attack.  See,
e.g., Glenn Harlan Reynolds, A Critical Guide to the Second
Amendment, 62 Tenn L Rev 461, 467 (1995) ("With the citizenry
armed, imposing tyranny would be far more difficult than it would
be with the citizenry defenseless."); Shalhope, 49 Law &amp; Contemp
Probs 125 at 126 (one theme shaping framers' attitudes in late
eighteenth century was "the vital interrelationship linking arms,
the individual, and society."); David Thomas Konig, The
Persistence of Resistance:  Civic Rights, Natural Rights, and
Property Rights in the Historical Debate Over "The Right of the
People to Keep and Bear Arms," 73 Fordham L Rev 539, 541
(2004) (American right to bear arms represented a right to
"impos[e] the force of the community on those who * * *
threatened its safety"); Barnett and Kates, 45 Emory LJ at 1216-17 (many founders thought that survival of republican government
depended on the "armed freeholder * * * able to repulse outlaws
and oppressive officials, * * * and foreign invaders"). (46) 
But see Cornell and DeDino, 73 Fordham L Rev at 500-501 (in
adopting "civic right" view of Second Amendment, authors rejected
notion that self-defense concerns accompanied adoption of that
amendment).
The framers of the United States Constitution "drew
most fully upon a tradition of 'republicanism'" espoused by
earlier European political philosophers such as Niccolo
Machiavelli and James Harrington, and more contemporary political
writers such as James Burgh.  Shalhope, 49 Law &amp; Contemp Probs at
126.  In keeping with that tradition, the framers understood that
the preservation of republican institutions "depended upon the
continued existence of a 'virtuous' citizenry."  Id. at
128.  As defined by Machiavelli, Harrington, and Burgh, the
"hallmark of virtuous republican citizenship" was the existence
of a self-reliant citizenry that both possessed arms and was
willing to use them "in defense of  * * * person, * * * property,
and * * * state."  Id. at 130-31.
Second Amendment scholars and commentators have focused
on that notion of a "virtuous citizenry" to conclude that,
historically, the Second Amendment guarantee excluded convicted
felons.  As one commentator wrote:
"[T]he [individual right] interpretation of the Second
Amendment does not guarantee a right to keep and bear
arms for everyone.  The right to arms always extended
beyond the core membership of the militia, encompassing
those (like women, seamen, clergymen, and those beyond
the upper age for militia service) who could not be
called out for militia duty.  But [individual right]
scholars tend to stress that[,] in
"'classical republican political philosophy,
the concept of a right to arms was
inextricably and multifariously tied to that
of the "virtuous citizen."  Free and
republican institutions were believed to be
dependent on civic virtu which, in
turn, depended upon each citizen being armed
-- and, therefore, fearless, self-reliant,
and upright.  Since possession of arms was
the hallmark of citizen's independence, the
ultimate expression of civic virtu was
his defensive use of arms against criminals,
oppressive officials, and foreign enemies
alike.  One implication of this emphasis
on the virtuous citizen is that the right to
arms does not preclude laws disarming the
unvirtuous (i.e. criminals) or those who,
like children or the mentally unbalanced, are
deemed incapable of virtue.'"
Reynolds, 62 Tenn L Rev at 480 (quoting Don B. Kates, Jr., The
Second Amendment:  A Dialogue, 49 Law &amp; Contemp Probs 143, 146
(Winter 1986)) (internal citations and footnotes omitted;
emphasis added).
The excerpt set out above suggests that, in light of
the political theories that guided the framers of the United
States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the framers never
intended felons to obtain the benefit of the Second Amendment
guarantee because they did not qualify as "virtuous citizens." 
Indeed, we have not found a scholar or commentator addressing the
topic who disagrees with that general conclusion.  We note,
however, that the articles that we have reviewed offer little by
way of concrete historical example to support that conclusion,
other than generally invoking the notion of "virtuous
citizenship."  For example, one commentator writes:
"The constitutionality of * * * legislation
[prohibiting firearms possession by felons] cannot
seriously be questioned on a theory that felons are
included within 'the people' whose right to arms is
guaranteed by the [S]econd [A]mendment.  Felons simply
did not fall within the benefits of the common law
right to possess arms.  That law punished felons with
automatic forfeiture of all goods, usually accompanied
by death.  We may presume that persons confined in
jails awaiting trial on criminal charges were also
debarred from the possession of arms.  Nor does it seem
that the Founders considered felons within the common
law right to arms or intended to confer any such right
upon them.  All the ratifying convention proposals
which most explicitly detailed the recommended right-to-arms amendment excluded criminals and the violent."
Kates, 82 Mich L Rev at 266; see also Kates, 49 Law &amp;
Contemp Probs at 146 (to same effect).  Unlike the rest of that
author's lengthy article analyzing the federal constitutional
right to bear arms, the above-quoted excerpt bears no citation to
any historical authority.  Further, as discussed earlier in this
opinion, only one of the "ratifying convention proposals" that
the author mentions -- far from all -- expressly would have
excluded common criminals and felons from the right to bear
arms. (47)
In sum, in light of the lack of definitive examples
from the historical record, we find much of the conclusory
scholarship respecting the right of felons to possess arms under
the Second Amendment to be unhelpful.  Other material, however,
provides us with a clearer picture of the scope of the framers'
view of the notion of a "virtuous citizen."  For example, some
scholars point to the writings of Cesare Beccaria, an Italian
philosopher whose work proved influential to Thomas Jefferson and
John Adams, and of Thomas Paine.  Beccaria was fiercely opposed
to the notion of disarming the general populace, for fear of the
now-common adage that, "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will
have guns."  Barnett and Kates, 45 Emory LJ at 1215. (48) 
Similarly, Paine wrote that "[a]rms like laws discourage and keep
the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the
world as well as property. * * * To protect themselves,
responsible citizens must arm themselves."  Shalhope, 49 Law &amp;
Contemp Probs at 129.  Further, an early constitutional scholar,
William Rawle, wrote that, although the Second Amendment could
not "be conceived to give congress a power to disarm the people,"
the right to bear arms "ought not, however, in any government, to
be abused to the disturbance of the public peace."  Robert
Dowlut, The Right to Arms:  Does the Constitution or the
Predilection of Judges Reign? 36 Okla L Rev 65, 84-85 (1983)
(quoting William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the
United States of America 125-26 (Phil 1825)).  Finally, in
emphasizing the notion of the "virtuous citizen," one commentator
has written that the founders "learned to conceive of tyrants as
felons whom the virtuous citizen should resist just as he would
resist any other species of robber."  Kates, 49 Law &amp; Contemp
Probs at 145-46 n 16.
Those guiding philosophies demonstrate the general view
of the framers of the Second Amendment that a certain criminal
element -- notably, "outlaws" using weapons or otherwise
committing injurious crimes against person and property --
occupied a lesser status in the community than the responsible,
law-abiding citizenry, particularly respecting the bearing of
arms.  See also Dowlut, 36 Okla L Rev at 70 (stating that
"[t]he necessity of self-defense against criminal attacks was
also a reason for keeping and bearing arms" and citing 1697
complaints that Philadelphia "was becoming invested with pirates
and rogues" and was "overrun with wickedness" (internal quotation
marks omitted)).  At the same time, the citizenry's bearing of
arms was necessary to repel crimes of that nature.
Finally, we note that the United States Supreme Court
has upheld federal legislation prohibiting felons from possessing
firearms against a Second Amendment challenge.  See
Lewis v. United States, 445 US 55, 66, 100 S Ct 915, 63 L
Ed 2d 198 (1980) ("Congress could rationally conclude that any
felony conviction, even an allegedly invalid one, is a sufficient
basis on which to prohibit the possession of a firearm"; "This
Court has recognized repeatedly that a legislature
constitutionally may prohibit a convicted felon from engaging in
activities far more fundamental than the possession of a
firearm," citing cases involving disenfranchisement, the holding
of public office, and professional licensing).  However, the
Court reached that conclusion in the context of an earlier
holding 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.'"  Id. at 65 n 8 (quoting United
States v. Miller, 307 US 174, 178, 59 S Ct 816, 83 L Ed 1206
(1939)).  Consequently, the court's particular construction of
the Second Amendment in Lewis -- which, unlike this court's
construction of Article I, section 27, in Kessler,
exclusively focused on the military use of arms -- is not
instructive to our analysis here. (49)
  4. Summary
The foregoing discussion demonstrates that certain
aspects of the text, case law, and historical circumstances
surrounding Article I, section 27, are, at times, in tension with
one another and may suggest different answers to the question
whether the Oregon Legislative Assembly has constitutional
authority to prohibit felons from possessing firearms. 
Recognizing that that tension complicates our task in these
cases, we summarize below the aspects of the text, case law, and
historical circumstances that are most illustrative and,
ultimately, point us to the intended meaning of Article I,
section 27.
The first -- and, indeed, primary -- aspect of our
analysis is the text of Article I, section 27, itself, considered
together with other relevant contextual constitutional
provisions.  As discussed, that text, viewed in isolation,
appears to be absolute, in referring to a right of "the people,"
without exception.  Conversely, other provisions of the Oregon
Constitution of 1859 either expressly excluded felons from the
exercise of a constitutional right or expressly granted the
legislature authority to regulate activity delineated in the Bill
of Rights.
Further, Oregon's laws at or shortly after statehood
portray a tradition of arms possession by the citizenry.  As
discussed, those laws provided no mechanism or authority for
disarming felons or other citizens deemed to be undeserving of
arms possession.  To the contrary, Oregon law expressly provided
that a felon's civil rights were merely "suspended" during any
period of incarceration less than life, and Oregon's early
militia laws contained no exceptions for felons, ex-convicts, or
any other category of criminal.  We also think it significant
that, unlike the frequent practice during colonial times, Oregon
traditionally did not impose the death penalty for most felonies;
by contrast, the death penalty was imposed for only first-degree
murder or certain crimes committed in the penitentiary. 
Consequently, since statehood, Oregon has had a community of
convicted felons living within its borders, many of whom have
committed dangerous crimes.  Nonetheless, as noted, Oregon did
not have any express mechanism for disarming that community when
the people adopted Article I, section 27, as part of the Oregon
Constitution in 1859.
Our inquiry, however, is not limited to the text of
Article I, section 27, or even to the Oregon historical
circumstances alone; rather, we also must consider this court's
case law construing Article I, section 27, and the broader
historical circumstances that surround that provision.  See
Kessler, 289 Or at 363-68 (scope of Article I, section 27,
is shaped by broader historical experiences of sixteenth and
seventeenth century England and colonial America); see also
generally DeMendoza v. Huffman, 334 Or 425, 437-43, 51
P3d 1232 (2002) (in analyzing remedy clause from original Oregon
Constitution, court considered historical understanding of
punitive damages dating to eighteenth-century English practice);
Rogers, 330 Or at 298-99 (in analyzing criminal defendant's
"right to be heard" under original Oregon Constitution, court
explained historical state of law at time of adoption of early
state constitutions on which Oregon's provision was based).  And,
as discussed below, several aspects of the case law and the
broader historical background demonstrate that those who drafted
Oregon's constitution recognized that the American citizenry's
right to bear arms -- as inherited from England -- was not
absolute.
As to the case law, this court explained in
Kessler and Blocker that, notwithstanding the absence
of express wording to that effect, Article I, section 27, allows
some legislative regulation respecting the right to bear arms for
defensive purposes.  See Blocker, 291 Or at 259
(citing Kessler for proposition that legislation that
restricts manner of possession or use of certain weapons
constitutionally may be permissible under Article I, section 27). 
That case law is consistent with the debate surrounding the
Indiana Constitution of 1851, on which the Oregon drafters based
this state's constitutional arms provision, which demonstrates
that the drafters intended to preserve the legislature's
authority to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons.  That
debate respecting concealed weapons in turn acknowledged the
state's role in ensuring public safety, which we consider
together with the wording of the constitutional guarantee.   
Turning to the broader historical background, we first
reiterate the purpose of the English right to bear arms set out
in the Bill of Rights of 1689, which served as the origin for the
American right.  As discussed earlier, the drafters of that
document were primarily concerned with the Crown's disarming of
religious dissidents, who were "law-abiding" citizens and "good
Subjects," through application of the Militia Act of 1662. 
Nothing in the history of the English right suggests that the
drafters of the English Bill of Rights intended the arms
provision to preclude the disarmament of serious lawbreakers;
indeed, the refusal of the King's Bench in 1686 to enforce
firearms restrictions against law-abiding citizens reinforces
that reading of the history.  That, in turn, counters any notion
that the traditional right to bear arms inherited from England
provided an absolute guarantee to those who violate criminal
laws.
We find another important aspect of the history of the
American right to bear arms, as inherited from England, in the
political philosophies of the American founders and the framers
of the Second Amendment.  The founders indisputably viewed the
right to bear arms as fundamental to a free society, because it
provided a mechanism whereby the people could act to prevent
oppression and tyranny and also to protect their principal rights
of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.  On
one hand, nothing that we have found in the Second Amendment
scholarship suggests that colonial society categorically would
have excluded felons, or any other type of lawbreaker, for that
matter, from communal efforts to ward off tyranny or other forms
of enemy attack.  Indeed, as we have noted, early colonial and
state militia laws did not exempt any type of lawbreaker from
required militia service.  On the other hand, protection of the
principal rights of personal security, personal liberty, and
private property required the bearing of arms against those who
sought to violate those rights -- including criminals and those
having no interest in preserving the public peace.  Shalhope, 49
Law &amp; Contemp Probs at 130-31.
Relatedly, the political view of the "virtuous
citizen," also prevalent at the time of the founding, suggested
that the right to bear arms carried with it the responsibility
for upstanding citizenship, which in turn required the willing
taking up of arms both to hunt down and to defend against those
who threatened the safety of the community.  Under that view, as
many scholars and commentators have concluded, upon violating the
social compact between the citizenry and society -- and,
simultaneously, the duty to act as a virtuous citizen -- by
committing serious crime, the lawbreaker's right to bear arms is
subject to restriction.
A final significant aspect of the history surrounding
Article I, section 27, is the historical practice -- both in
England and in colonial America -- respecting the regulation of
the bearing of arms and the use of arms to defend against
criminal activity.  As discussed, those societies generally
directed such regulations toward public safety concerns -- such
as restrictions extending to those who posed a threat to the
public peace or who were perceived to pose such a threat, and
other prohibitions on the carrying of concealed weapons and the
carrying of weapons or shooting of weapons in towns or crowded
areas.  Further, the loyalty oath requirements in place in
Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century demonstrated that, at
that time and in those circumstances, the community's security
outweighed any right to bear arms set out under a state
constitutional provision that provided a genesis for Oregon's
provision.  Finally, in both seventeenth-century England and in
colonial America, society viewed the criminal element as a
segment of the population that the law-abiding citizenry was
obliged to hunt down and bring to justice, so as to protect
oneself and one's community.
After reviewing and considering all the foregoing
materials, we reach the following conclusions.  First, when the
drafters of the Oregon Constitution adopted and approved the
wording of Article I, section 27, they did not intend to deprive
the legislature of the authority to restrict arms possession (and
manner of possession) to the extent that such regulation of arms
is necessary to protect the public safety.  Second, and more
significantly for our purposes here, Article I, section 27, does
not deprive the legislature of the authority (1) to designate
certain groups of persons as posing identifiable threats to the
safety of the community by virtue of earlier commission of
serious criminal conduct and, in accordance with such a
designation, (2) to restrict the exercise of the constitutional
guarantee by members of those groups.
That is not to say, however, that the legislature's
authority to restrict the bearing of arms is so broad as to be
unlimited.  Rather, any restriction must satisfy the purpose of
that authority in the face of Article I, section 27:  the
protection of public safety.  It follows that, although it has
broad authority under that provision to assess the threat to
public safety that a particular group poses, the legislature is
not free to designate any group without limitation as one whose
membership may not bear arms.  Instead, such a designation must
satisfy the permissible legislative purpose of protecting the
security of the community against the potential harm that results
from the possession of arms.
The foregoing conclusion is consistent with the
historical underpinnings of the right to bear arms as discussed
in this opinion.  It also is consistent with the early American
arms restrictions and certain early practices in Pennsylvania and
Massachusetts of disarming particular persons who threatened the
state's interest in maintaining security:  The common thread
among all those restrictions was their objective of protecting
the public from identifiable threats to the public safety, such
as serious criminal conduct and various harms resulting from the
possession of arms (e.g., shooting within town limits). 
And, as to those traditional restrictions extending to particular
groups of persons, it was understood that the authority to
designate a group posing such a threat fell within the
legislative purview.  Nothing in the historical record suggests
that, when they drafted Article I, section 27, the framers of the
Oregon Constitution held any contrary understanding respecting
the legislature's authority to designate certain groups as posing
identifiable threats to the public safety by virtue of the
earlier commission of serious criminal conduct.
C. ORS 166.270(1) is Not Unconstitutionally Overbroad
The final question in these cases is whether, in light
of the foregoing analysis, ORS 166.270(1) is unconstitutionally
overbroad because it impinges in some circumstances on conduct
that Article I, section 27, protects.  As explained below, we
conclude that it is not.
In devising Oregon's Criminal Code, the legislature
adopted the familiar term from the common law, "felony," to
describe the class of crimes that represent the most serious
kinds of antisocial behavior.  The legislature punishes felonies
only as the result of a criminal prosecution, and it has
authorized the imposition on convicted felons the most serious
punitive sanctions in the legislative arsenal, ranging up to
long-term imprisonment and death.  It is undeniable that a felony
conviction, by contrast to guilt determinations and adjudications
for lesser crimes, offenses, and administrative violations,
carries a markedly greater punitive significance in the eyes of
the community and, typically, a far broader range of negative
collateral consequences.  Those characteristics demonstrate that
conviction of a "felony" signifies a breach of society's most
essential rules for obligatory conduct -- rules that are central
to the legislative task of protecting the public from violence
and various forms of abuse.
The foregoing leads us to conclude that, in enacting
ORS 166.270(1), the legislature acted within its proper authority
to restrict the possession of arms by the members of a group
whose conduct demonstrates an identifiable threat to public
safety.  It follows that ORS 166.270(1) is not unconstitutionally
overbroad, as defendants contend.
IV.  CONCLUSION
For the reasons set out above, we hold that ORS
166.270(1) is not unconstitutionally overbroad on its face under
Article I, section 27, of the Oregon Constitution.  Accordingly,
the trial courts did not err in overruling defendants' demurrers
to their indictments.
The decisions of the Court of Appeals and the judgments
of the circuit court are affirmed.
1. ORS 166.270 provides, in part:
"(1) Any person who has been convicted of a felony
under the law of this state or any other state, or who
has been convicted of a felony under the laws of the
Government of the United States, who owns or has in the
person's possession or under the person's custody or
control any firearm, commits the crime of felon in
possession of a firearm."
2. Article I, section 27, of the Oregon Constitution
provides:
"The people shall have the right to bear arms for
the defence of themselves, and the State, but the
Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the
civil power[.]"
The constitutional term "defence" reflects the British spelling
of the word "defense."
3. The state correctly notes that defendants did not bring
as-applied challenges to ORS 166.270(1) in these cases -- that
is, they did not argue that, in light of the individual
circumstances of their respective crimes and backgrounds, the
legislature could not constitutionally prohibit them from bearing
arms in their own defense.
4. We note, as the state points out, that the legislature
has limited application of ORS 166.270(1) to a certain extent by
enacting subsection (4) to ORS 166.270, which provides, in part:
"Subsection (1) of this section does not apply to
any person who has been:
"(a) Convicted of only one felony under the law of
this state or any other state, or who has been
convicted of only one felony under the laws of the
United States, which felony did not involve criminal
homicide * * * or the possession or use of a firearm or
a weapon having a blade that projects or swings into
position by force of a spring or by centrifugal force,
and who has been discharged from imprisonment, parole
or probation for said offense for a period of 15 years
prior to the date of the alleged violation of
subsection (1) of this section; or
"(b) Granted relief from the disability under 18
U.S.C. 925(c) or has had the person's record expunged
under the laws of this state or equivalent laws of
another jurisdiction."
Under ORS 166.270(4)(a), then, the legislature has exempted any
person who previously committed only a single felony that did not
involve criminal homicide or the use of certain weapons, and who
completed a term of imprisonment or supervision for that felony
more than 15 years before the possession at issue, from
prosecution for being a felon in possession of a firearm. 
Although we proceed to analyze the guarantee set out in Article
I, section 27, in light of the parties' broader framing of the
issue in these cases -- that is, whether the prohibition set out
in ORS 166.270(1) is unconstitutionally overbroad as it applies
to all felons -- we are mindful of the narrow exception set out
in subsection (4).
We further note that ORS 166.270(1) also offers no
opportunity for a narrowing construction as to the purpose
of the possession, because it prohibits all felons from owning or
possessing any firearms without referring to the intent behind
that ownership or possession.  As explained below, Article I,
section 27, is not implicated when the bearing of arms is for a
nondefensive purpose, because the constitutional guarantee
extends to only the bearing of arms for purposes of defense. 
Finally, although it is not at issue in these cases, the
particular "arms" involved also might not implicate Article I,
section 27, as this court discussed at length in State v.
Kessler, 289 Or 359, 368-70, 614 P2d 94 (1980) (discussing
meaning of term "arms" and concluding that it likely included
weapons used by settlers for personal and military defense).
5. We recognize, as the state notes, that other provisions
of the Oregon Bill of Rights use the more individual phrases "no
person," "the person," "every man," and "any citizen" to describe
the nature of various constitutional guarantees.  See Or
Const, Art I, ;st;st 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 20, 24 (incorporating
those phrases).  However, this court's constructions in
Campbell and Kessler of Article I, sections 9 and 27,
conclusively establish the individual nature of the rights set
out in those provisions, notwithstanding the presence of the
broader words "the people."
6. The people have amended Article II, section 3, twice
since 1859.  See Or Laws 1943, SJR 9; Or Laws 1979, SJR 26. 
That section now provides:
  "A person suffering from a mental handicap is
entitled to the full rights of an elector, if otherwise
qualified, unless the person has been adjudicated
incompetent to vote as provided by law.  The
privilege of an elector, upon conviction of any crime
which is punishable by imprisonment in the
penitentiary, shall be forfeited, unless otherwise
provided by law."
Or Const, Art II, ;st 3 (emphasis added).
7. Along the same lines, the drafters of the Oregon
Constitution included a "felony exception" respecting the
legislative privilege from arrest.  See Or Const, Art IV,
;st 9 ("Senators and Representatives in all cases, except
for treason, felony, or breaches of the peace, shall be
privileged from arrest during the session of the Legislative
Assembly, and in going to and returning from the same[.]"
(Emphasis added.)).
8. The people repealed Article I, section 31 (1859),
following legislative referral, in 1970.  See Or Laws 1969,
HJR 16 (setting out repeal referral).
9. ORS 166.270 (1957), amended by Or Laws 1975, ch
702, ;st 1, provided in part:
  "Any unnaturalized foreign-born person or any
person who has been convicted of a felony against the
person or property of another or against the Government
of the United States or of this state, or of any
political subdivision of this state, who owns, or has
in his possession or under his custody or control any
pistol, revolver, or other firearm capable of being
concealed upon the person, or machine gun, shall be
punished upon conviction by imprisonment in the
penitentiary * * *."
10. As discussed further below, the drafters of
the Oregon Constitution derived Article I, section 27,
from Article I, sections 32 and 33, of the Indiana
Constitution of 1851.
11. The 1965 version of ORS 166.270 at issue in
Cartwright was identical to the 1957 version at
issue in Robinson, set out above, \r1\ Or at \r1\
n 9 (slip op at 20 n 9).
12. As noted above, in Cartwright, 246 Or
at 136, the court suggested that the defensive
circumstances to which Article I, section 27, applied
were limited to circumstances involving "a sudden
onslaught and imminent threat of great bodily harm or
possible death."  However, this court's subsequent
extensive analysis and ultimate decision in
Kessler, 289 Or at 371, discussed later in the
text, appears to have recognized broader protection
respecting the defensive circumstances in question in
declaring that Article I, section 27, protects the
right "to possess certain arms for defense of person
and property."  (Emphasis added.)
13. Former ORS 166.510 (1979) provided in
part:
  "(1) Except as provided in ORS 166.515 or 166.520,
any person who manufactures, causes to be manufactured,
sells, keeps for sale, offers, gives, loans, carries or
possesses an instrument or weapon having a blade which
projects or swings into position by force of a spring
or other device and commonly known as a switch-blade
knife or an instrument or weapon commonly known as a
blackjack, slung shot, billy, sandclub, sandbag, sap
glove or mental knuckles, or who carries a dirk, dagger
or stiletto commits a Class A misdemeanor."
The court in Kessler noted that the term
"slugging weapon" was used in the complaint filed in
the case, although the statute itself did not use that
term.  289 Or at 361 n 1.  The legislature repealed
former ORS 166.510 (1979) in 1985.  Or Laws 1985,
ch 709, ;st 4.
14. We note that the court in Kessler did
not specifically mention whether the defendant had
challenged former ORS 166.510 (1979) as
unconstitutional on its face or as applied to his
particular circumstances.  The court's opinion
generally analyzes the statute from the perspective of
a facial challenge; however, the court limited its
ultimate conclusion to the particular circumstances of
the defendant's case (that is, possession of protected
arms in the home). 
15. Specifically, the weapon at issue in
Blocker was a wooden object that, purportedly,
originally had been intended for use as a lamp base;
the defendant acknowledged that he had possessed it
with intent to use it to strike people who harassed
him.  291 Or at 258.
16. In that regard, the court cited "regulatory"
statutes that prohibited the possession of a dangerous
weapon with intent to use it unlawfully, the carrying
of a concealed weapon, and the carrying of a concealed
firearm without a license.  Blocker, 291 Or at
259-60.  The court also cited discussion from
Kessler, which specifically had noted this
court's decision in Cartwright, 246 Or 120
(upholding statute prohibiting certain felons from
possessing certain firearms), and the Idaho Supreme
Court's decision in State v. Hart, 66 Id 217, 157
P2d 72 (1945) (upholding statute prohibiting carrying
of concealed weapons).  Blocker, 291 Or at 259
(citing Kessler, 289 Or at 370)).  As explained
earlier in this opinion, this court based its ultimate
conclusion in Cartwright on an understanding of
the "police power" doctrine that the court since has
abandoned.
17. In concluding that it was appropriate to
develop defendant's overbreadth challenge for him, the
court specifically noted that it had decided
Kessler after the defendant's case in
Blocker had been tried and appealed, and that the
Court of Appeals had held Blocker for this
court's disposition in Kessler.  Blocker
291 Or at 261.  By contrast, defendants in these cases
specifically rely on Blocker to argue that ORS
166.270(1) is unconstitutionally overbroad.
18. Former ORS 166.510(1) (1983) was
identical to the earlier versions of that statute at
issue in Kessler and Blocker.
19. Article I, section 32, of the Indiana
Constitution of 1851 provided that "[t]he people shall
have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves
and the State."
Article I, section 33, of the Indiana Constitution of
1851 provided that "[t]he military shall be kept in
strict subordination to the civil power."
20. That provision was adopted without debate or
amendment during Indiana's 1816 constitutional
convention.  Charles Kettleborough, 1 Constitution
Making in Indiana, 1780-1851 88 n 5 (1971).
21. We note that, in light of the Indiana Supreme
Court's 1833 decision in State v. Mitchell, 3
Blackf 229 (Ind 1833), respecting the 1816 Indiana arms
provision, that appears to have been an erroneous
proposition.
22. Article VIII, section 20, of the Ohio
Constitution of 1802 provided:
"That the people have a right to bear
arms for the defence of themselves and the
State; and as standing armies, in time of
peace, are dangerous to liberty, they shall
not be kept up, and that the military shall
be kept under strict subordination to the
civil power."
Reprinted in William F. Swindler, 7 Sources
and Documents of the United States Constitution 555
(1978).  Article XII of the Kentucky Constitution of
1792 provided, in part, "[t]hat the right of the
citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the
State shall not be questioned."
Reprinted in Swindler, 4 Sources and
Documents at 150.
23. Article IX, section 21, of the Pennsylvania
Constitution of 1790 provided "[t]hat the right of
citizens to bear arms, in defence of themselves and the
State, shall not be questioned."
Reprinted in Swindler, 8 Sources and
Documents at 293.
Pennsylvania's declaration of the right to
bear arms in its 1776 constitution appears to be the
first such expression appearing in an organic document
of one of the states.  Bernard Schwartz, 1 The Bill
of Rights: A Documentary History 262 (1971). That declaration provided:
"That the people have a right to bear
arms for the defence of themselves and the
state; and as standing armies in the time of
peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought
not to be kept up; And that the military
should be kept under strict subordination to,
and governed by, the civil power."
Reprinted in Swindler, 8 Sources and
Documents at 279.  
24. We note that there is no pre-1859 case law
construing either the Ohio or Pennsylvania
constitutional provisions that later provided a basis
for the Indiana Constitution of 1816.  The earliest
Ohio case that we could locate issued in 1900 and
upheld a restriction on firearms possession by tramps. 
See State v. Hogan, 63 Oh St 202, 219, 58
NE 572, 575 (1900) (guarantee never intended as
"warrant for vicious persons to carry weapons with
which to terrorize others").  The earliest relevant
Pennsylvania case that we could locate issued in 1875
and upheld a law criminalizing the act of maliciously
carrying a concealed weapon with intent to harm
another.  See Wright v. Commonwealth, 77 Pa
470 (1875) (act, which specified element of malicious
intent, prohibited conduct that was not protected by
arms provision in Pennsylvania Constitution).
25. The reasoning in such cases frequently is
similar to that set out in Robinson, 217 Or 612,
and Cartwright, 246 Or 120, that is, that the
notion of the police power, or some general state
interest in the prevention of crime, permits reasonable
restraint of the right to bear arms.  Other cases
conclude that, because the right to bear arms
originally was intended to protect against an
oppressive government, reasonable restraints respecting
the public peace and welfare do not contravene the
right.  See John Levin, The Right to Bear
Arms:  The Development of the American Experience,
48 Chi-Kent L Rev 148, 159 (1971) (discussing various
rationales and citing cases).  It appears that every
state court that has addressed a challenge to
legislation prohibiting felons from possessing firearms
under a state constitutional provision similar to
Oregon's has upheld the legislation at issue.  See,
e.g., Baker v. State, 747 NE2d 633, 637 (Ind
App 2001) (holding, under police-power rationale, that
statute prohibiting possession of handgun by serious
violent offender was constitutional under Indiana's
right to bear arms provision); Eary v.
Commonwealth, 659 SW2d 198, 200 (Ky 1983) (holding
that statute prohibiting felons from possessing
handguns was constitutional under Kentucky's right to
bear arms provision); People v. Swint, 225 Mich
App 353, 374-75, 572 NW2d 666 (1997), cert
dismissed, 459 Mich 931 (1998) (holding, under
police-power rationale, that prohibiting felons from
possessing firearms was not unconstitutional because
statute did not completely foreclose right).
In that regard, we note that we agree with
the observation that many of the cases construing state
constitutional arms provisions "rarely refer to the
specific language of their constitutions, and they
often cite the provisions and court decisions of other
states without noting differences in language and
emphasis."  Comment, The Impact of State
Constitutional Right to Bear Arms Provisions on State
Gun Control Legislation, 38 U Chi L Rev 185, 193
(1970).  In light of that lack of detailed analysis,
together with the emphasis on the outdated notion of
the "police power" incorporated in many of the
decisions, we find most of the decisions from other
courts to be of little use to our analysis here.
26. Mitchell was a one-sentence decision,
declaring that the statute in question was not
unconstitutional.  3 Blackf 229.
27. See Ky Const, Art XIII, ;st 25 (1850)
("[T]he rights of the citizens to bear arms in defence
of themselves and the State shall not be questioned;
but the general assembly may pass laws to prevent
persons from carrying concealed arms.")  By 1900, six
additional states had included preventative "concealed
weapons" wording in their constitutional arms
provisions.  See Colo Const, Art II, ;st 13
(1987); La Const, Bill of Rts, Art III (1879); Miss
Const, Art III, ;st 12 (1890); Mo Const, Art II, ;st 17
(1875); Mont Const, Art III, ;st 13 (1889); NC Const,
Art I, ;st 24 (1876) (all setting out such wording).
Also by 1900, six other states had adopted
constitutional provisions that expressly authorized
legislative regulation of the right to bear arms. 
See Fla Const, Decl of Rts, ;st 20 (1885) ("The
right of the people to bear arms in defence of
themselves and the lawful authority of the State, shall
not be infringed, but the Legislature may prescribe the
manner in which they may be borne."); Ga Const, Art I,
;st 1, XXII (1877) ("The right of the people to keep
and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but the General
Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in
which arms may be borne."); Idaho Const, Art I, ;st 11
(1889) ("The people have the right to bear arms for
their security and defense; but the Legislature shall
regulate the exercise of this right by law."); Tenn
Const, Art I, ;st 26 (1870) ("[T]he citizens of this
State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their
common defense.  But the Legislature shall have power
by law to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to
prevent crime."); Tex Const, Art I, ;st 23 (1870)
("Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear
arms in the lawful defence of himself or the State; but
the Legislature shall have power by law to regulate the
wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime."); Utah
Const, Art I, ;st 6 (1895) ("The people have the right
to bear arms for their security and defense, but the
legislature may regulate the exercise of this right by
law.").
28. As defendants point out, at the time that the
Oregon Constitution was adopted, Native Americans were
not universally viewed as part of the American
citizenry unequivocally protected by state and federal
constitutional provisions.  Rather, the extent of such
constitutional protection -- if any -- depended on the
existence and terms of particular treaties between the
federal government and the various Native American
tribes.  See generally United States ex rel.
Mackey v. Cox, 59 US (18 How) 100, 102-04, 15 L Ed
299, 300-01 (1855)(holding that Cherokee Nation is
domestic territory, governed by own laws, but organized
under and subject to United States Constitution and
acts of Congress); The Kansas Indians, 72 US (5
Wall 737), 18 L Ed 667 (1866) (analyzing provisions of
particular treaties to determine extent of
constitutional protections afforded to various tribes
and stating that Native Americans were not citizens of
Kansas or subject to its laws).  We therefore do not
view early laws excluding Native Americans from any
right to bear arms as significantly demonstrative of
any intent on the framers' part respecting legislative
authority to restrict other groups of persons from
bearing arms. 
29. 9 Stat 323, ;st 5 (1848) provided, in part:
  "Every white male inhabitant, above the age of
twenty-one years, who shall have been a resident of
said territory at the time of the passage of this act,
and shall possess the qualifications hereinafter
prescribed, shall be entitled to vote at the first
election, and shall be eligible to any office within
the said territory; but the qualifications of voters
and of holding office, at all subsequent elections,
shall be such as shall be prescribed by the legislative
assembly; Provided, That the right of suffrage
and of holding office, shall be exercised only by
citizens of the United States above the age of twenty-one years, and those above that age who shall have
declared, on oath, their intention to become such, and
shall have taken an oath to support the constitution of
the United States, and the provisions of this act[.]"
As noted earlier, Article II, section 3, of the Oregon
Constitution of 1859 later disqualified felons from
voting.
30. See Laws of Oregon 1856-1857, 8th
Regular Session (1856-57), p 12 (setting out act to
provide for election and defining duties of
penitentiary superintendent); Oregon Laws 1857-1858,
9th Regular Session (1857-58), p 45-48 (act to provide
for labor of penitentiary convicts) (effective February
1858); Laws of Oregon 1858-1859, 10th Regular Session
(1858-59), p 35-39 (act to more effectively provide for
labor and safekeeping of penitentiary convicts)
(effective January 1859); General Laws of Oregon, Spec
Sess (Dec 1865), p 3 (act creating offices and
providing for oversight of penitentiary) (effective
December 1865); General Laws of Oregon, Misc Laws, ch
XLIV title II, ;st;st 19-25, p 702-04 (Deady &amp; Lane
1843-1872) (setting out early-release system based on
merit marks) (effective October 1864).
31. Specifically, the statutes restricted
possession of such arms based on a person's yearly
income from land.  Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and
Bear Arms:  The Origins of An Anglo-American Right
9-10 (1994).
32. As one commentator noted:
  "'[N]o pre-1789 society considered soldiering a
calling for any but the few.  War was rightly seen as
too brutal a business for any except those bred to it
by social position or driven to enlist by lack of any
social position whatsoever; mercenaries and regulars
alike, poor, jobless, often criminally outcast, were
judged fitted for war because peaceful life offered
them nothing but equivalent hardship.'
Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., Revolt of the Masses:  Armed
Civilians and the Insurrectionary Theory of the Second
Amendment, 62 Tenn L Rev 643, 647, 647 n 21 (1995) (quoting
John Keegan, A History of Warfare 364 (1993) (emphasis
added).  Dunlap went on to write:
"It was obvious to the early Americans that a
force so composed was vulnerable to nefarious
exploitation by the leaders upon whom its existence
depended.  Quartering such soldiers in colonists' homes
became yet another catalyst for the Revolution."
Dunlap, 62 Tenn L Rev at 647 n 21.
33. In general, the game acts imposed property ownership
qualifications as requirements for hunting and made it illegal
for unqualified persons to use guns.  Malcolm, To Keep and
Bear Arms at 13.
34. In introducing her extensive research on the
underpinnings of the English Bill of Rights of 1689, Malcolm
explains that, although it purported to reaffirm an ancient
common-law right, that document actually created a new right in
declaring a right to bear arms.  Malcolm, To Keep and Bear
Arms at ix-x; see also Lucilius A. Emery, The
Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 28 Harv L Rev 473,
473 (1915) (noting that firearm restriction imposed in 1328
Statute of Northampton illustrated that "a right to keep and bear
arms was not regarded [at that time] as a fundamental right of
every Englishman").
35. Scholars and commentators have debated the meaning of
the "as allowed by law" clause, which the delegates added during
the course of the convention and which appears to limit the
nature of the right declared.  See, e.g., Malcolm, To
Keep and Bear Arms at 120 (phrase implied that prior gun-ownership limitations imposed by pre-existing laws, such as the
Game Act of 1671 and Militia Act of 1662 remained in place, which
meant that "the arms article declared a right that current law
negated, with the understanding that future legislation would
eliminate the discrepancy"); Don B. Kates, Jr., Handgun
Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment,
82 Mich L Rev 204, 237 (1983) (phrase could have been intended to
specify that Protestants' newly declared right to arms was no
greater than that which had pre-existed at common law; more
likely, phrase meant that Crown, but not Parliament, was
prohibited from disarming the citizenry).  In view of the
disagreement respecting the meaning of that phrase (which, in any
event, focuses on circumstances unique to English history), and
its subsequent absence from early American state constitutions
and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, the
presence of that limiting wording in the English Bill of Rights
is not helpful to our analysis here.
36. Shalhope quotes the following sources:  J. Trenchard &amp;
W. Moyle, An Argument Shewing, That a Standing Army Is
Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive
to the Constitution of the English Monarch 7 (London 1697)
(arms were "never lodg'd in the hand of any who had not an
Interest in preserving the publick Peace"); and 103 Mercurius
Politicus 1610 (London, May 20-27, 1652) (arms should not be
"in the hands of any but such as have an Interest in the
Publick").
37. Specifically, "[t]o vindicate these rights, when
actually violated or attacked," Blackstone wrote that English
subjects were entitled "in the first place, to the regular
administration and free course of justice in the courts of law;
next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for
redress of grievances; and lastly to the right of having and
using arms for self-preservation and defence."  Malcolm, To
Keep and Bear Arms at 143 (quoting William Blackstone, I
Commentaries on the Laws of England, 140 (1st ed, repr
Chicago 1979).
38. We note that two other scholars recently have
criticized Barnett and Kates for failing to offer a complete
reading of the historical record respecting the American right to
bear arms.  See Saul Cornell and Nathan DeDino, A Well
Regulated Right:  The Early American Origins of Gun Control,
73 Fordham L Rev 487, 504 (2004) (criticizing work of Barnett and
Kates).  We further note, as explained below, that the
acrimonious nature of much of the debate surrounding
interpretation of the Second Amendment to the United States
Constitution has resulted in similar cross-criticisms between
other scholars and commentators.  We have not relied in this
opinion on any historical summaries that, in our determination,
persuasively have been challenged in the academic arena.
39. As to the early American prohibitions respecting arms
ownership by persons of African descent, courts regularly upheld
such restrictions based on the reasoning that such persons "could
be denied the right to arms because they were excluded by race
from all privileges of citizenship."  Kates, 82 Mich L Rev
at 245-46 (emphasis in original) (citing State v. Newsom,
27 NC 250, 5 Ired 181 (1844); cf. Cooper v. Mayor of
Savannah, 4 Ga 68 (1848) (persons of African descent were not
citizens)).  The United States Supreme Court adopted that same
reasoning in Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 US (19 How)
393, 417, 450, 15 L Ed 691 (1856), in opining that, if state
legislatures were to consider persons of African descent to be
American citizens, then they must accept that those persons
enjoyed all rights of the citizenry, including "the full liberty
of speech * * * and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." 
See also Markus Dirk Dubber, Policing Possession:  The
War on Crime and the End of Criminal Law, 91 J Crim L &amp;
Criminlogy 839, 929 n 336 (2001) (setting out examples of pre-Civil War slave codes).  In light of that distinction based on
then-understood notions of citizenship, restrictions on arms
ownership respecting persons of African descent (as well as
Native Americans, as noted earlier) do not demonstrate a common
understanding that the government constitutionally could disarm
other groups of persons -- such as felons or criminals.
40. See Stefan B. Tahmassebi, Gun Control and
Racism, 2 Geo Mason U Civ Rts LJ 67, 69-72, 79-80 (1991) (most
southern states prohibited slaves and freed persons of African
descent from possessing firearms; other states prohibited giving
or selling firearms to Native Americans); William Weir, A Well
Regulated Militia:  The Battle Over Gun Control 37 (1997) (by
1850, every western state prohibited carrying concealed weapons;
local authorities in West prohibited weapons within city limits);
Cornell and DeDino, 73 Fordham L Rev at 501 (late eighteenth-century guidebooks used by justices of the peace, sheriffs, and
constables of founding era stated that, under common law, such
officials "were empowered to disarm individuals who rode about
armed in terror of the peace"); State v. Huntly, 25 NC 418,
419-23 (1843) (offense of riding with dangerous weapons "to the
terror of the people" is indictable); see also
Commonwealth v. Hope, 39 Mass 1, 4-7, 22 Pick 1 (1839)
(burglary at night armed with dangerous weapon punishable by
death, but if not armed, punishable by hard labor for life).
41. See Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be
Armed:  The Evolution of a Constitutional Right 172 (1st ed
1984) (stating that "felons were always excluded from the
militia"); Randy E. Barnett and Don B. Kates, Under Fire:  The
New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 Emory LJ 1139, 1205
n 313 (1996) ("Under the colonial militia laws, every military-age male (excepting the insane, infirm, and criminals) was
subject to the requirement to own arms for militia service and to
bring them when called out for drill, inspection, or actual
military campaigning.").  We note that the latter article refers
to the United States Supreme Court's decision in United States
v. Miller, 307 US 174, 59 S Ct 816, 83 L Ed 1206 (1939), in
contending, among other things, that criminals traditionally were
excluded from early state militias.  However, nothing in
Miller -- which ultimately upheld an interstate firearms
registration requirement under the reasoning that the Second
Amendment pertains to the effectiveness of militia forces --
supports that conclusion.  See 307 US at 179-82 (discussing
early colonial militia laws).
42. The United States Supreme Court wrote in Robertson
v. Baldwin, 165 US 275, 281, 17 S Ct 326, 41 L Ed 715 (1897):
"[T]he first ten Amendments to the Constitution * * *
were not intended to lay down any novel principles of
government, but simply to embody certain guaranties and
immunities which we had inherited from our English
ancestors."
43. Indeed, adherents to the collective-right
view and quasi-collective or "civic right" view of the
Second Amendment easily would conclude that felons
constitutionally may be disarmed, because those
adherents do not view the right as an individual one in
any circumstance.  See, e.g., Cornell and DeDino,
73 Fordham L Rev at 496-99 (expressly rejecting notion
that Second Amendment guarantees individual right to
bear arms for personal protection).
44. The full text of the proposed amendment
provided:
"That the people have a right to bear
arms for the defence of themselves and their
own State or the United States, or for the
purpose of killing game; and no law shall be
passed for disarming the people or any of
them unless for crimes committed, or real
danger of public injury from individuals; and
as standing armies in the time of peace are
dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be
kept up; and that the military shall be kept
under strict subordination to, and be
governed by the civil powers."
The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority
of the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania to their
Constituents, 1787, reprinted in Schwartz, 2
Bill of Rights at 665.
45. New York and Virginia also recommended that
the government add a bill of rights to the federal
constitution that included a right to bear arms. 
However, those proposals did not exclude explicitly
criminals or nonpeaceable citizens.  See
Schwartz, 2 Bill of Rights at 912, 842.
46. This court recognized that same principle in
Kessler, 289 Or at 367:
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has
justly been considered, as the palladium of the
liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral
check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of
rulers; and will generally, even if these are
successful in the first instance, enable the people to
resist and triumph over them."
(quoting Joseph Story, 3 Commentaries on the
Constitution, 746 (1833) (internal quotations
omitted)).  Indeed, the efforts of the British
government to disarm the colonists at the time of the
Revolutionary War prompted the notion that a right to
bear arms was necessary to secure liberty.  See
Journals of Congress (July 19, 1776), printed in
Pennsylvania Gazette, (July 24, 1776), reprinted
in 5 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 592-93 (Worthington Chauncey Ford ed., 1906,
repr 1968) (so demonstrating).
One writer also has noted the significance of
the right to bear arms as to the fundamental American
notion of division of governmental power.  That is, in
addition to dividing power within the federal
government among the three branches, and further
generally dividing governmental power between the
federal and state governments, "it is fair to say that
the Framers divided power yet another way, by ensuring
that the citizenry possessed sufficient military power
to offset that of the Federal government."  Reynolds,
62 Tenn L Rev at 469.
47. That problematic lack of historical support
persists in other articles concluding that the framers
intended to exclude felons outright from the Second
Amendment guarantee.  For example, after discussing the
notion of the virtuous citizen, another commentator
relied on the writings from Kates, set out and cited in
the text above, to conclude:
"Thus, felons, children, and the insane were
excluded from the right to arms precisely as
(and for the same reasons) they were excluded
from the franchise--though some (women for
example) who lacked the right to vote
nonetheless possessed the right to arms."
Reynolds, 62 Tenn L Rev at 480 (internal footnotes
omitted).  Similarly, another author inaccurately cites
Thomas M. Cooley's 1903 Treatise on Constitutional
Limitations as support for the proposition that
"Colonial and English societies of the eighteenth
century * * * excluded infants, idiots, lunatics, and
felons" from possessing arms in their defense. 
See Robert Dowlut, The Right to Arms:  Does
the Constitution or the Predilection of Judges
Reign? 36 Okla L Rev 65, 96, 96 n 147 (1983) (citing
T. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional
Limitations Which Rest Upon the Legislative Power of
the States of the American Union 57 (7th ed 1903),
which generally states that certain classes almost
universally have been excluded from the right of
franchise, including "the idiot, the lunatic, and
the felon, on obvious grounds").
48. Beccaria wrote:
"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a
thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling
inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it
burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has
no remedy for evils, except destruction.  The laws that
forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. 
They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.  Can it be supposed that
those who have the courage to violate the most sacred
laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will
respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which
can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if
strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty -- so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator
-- and subject innocent persons to all the vexations
that the quality alone ought to suffer?  Such laws make
things worse for the assaulted and better for the
assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to
prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked
with greater confidence than an armed man.  They ought
to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of
crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few
isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of
the inconveniences and advantages of a universal
decree."
Barnett and Kates, 45 Emory LJ at 1215 (quoting The
Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson 314 (G Chinard
ed., 1926) (quoting Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on
Crimes and Punishments 87-8 (1764)).
49. We reiterate that the more recent, prevalent
academic view is that the Second Amendment appears to
protect an individual right to bear arms, as well as a
right related to militia service.  See \r1\ Or at
\r1\ (slip op at 63-64) (discussing conflict among
Second Amendment scholars and commentators).  The
Supreme Court has not addressed that issue since
deciding Lewis in 1980.