Opinion ID: 145777
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prefatory Clause.

Text: The prefatory clause reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State. . . . a. Well-Regulated Militia. In United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 179, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206 (1939), we explained that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. That definition comports with founding-era sources. See, e.g., Webster (The militia of a country are the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades . . . and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations); The Federalist No. 46, pp. 329, 334 (B. Wright ed.1961) (J. Madison) (near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands); Letter to Destutt de Tracy (Jan. 26, 1811), in The Portable Thomas Jefferson 520, 524 (M. Peterson ed. 1975) ([T]he militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms). Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the militia, stating that [m]ilitias are the state- and congressionally-regulated military forces described in the Militia Clauses (art. I, § 8, cls. 15-16). Brief for Petitioners 12. Although we agree with petitioners' interpretive assumption that militia means the same thing in Article I and the Second Amendment, we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia. Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (to raise . . . Armies; to provide . . . a Navy, Art. I, § 8, cls. 12-13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to provide for calling forth the militia, § 8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to organiz[e] itand not to organize a militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize the militia, connoting a body already in existence, ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force. That is what Congress did in the first militia Act, which specified that each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia. Act of May 8, 1792, 1 Stat. 271. To be sure, Congress need not conscript every able-bodied man into the militia, because nothing in Article I suggests that in exercising its power to organize, discipline, and arm the militia, Congress must focus upon the entire body. Although the militia consists of all able-bodied men, the federally organized militia may consist of a subset of them. Finally, the adjective well-regulated implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. See Johnson 1619 (Regulate: To adjust by rule or method); Rawle 121-122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights § 13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms). b. Security of a Free State. The phrase security of a free state meant security of a free polity, not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued, see 478 F.3d, at 405, and n. 10. Joseph Story wrote in his treatise on the Constitution that the word `state' is used in various senses [and in] its most enlarged sense, it means the people composing a particular nation or community. 1 Story § 208; see also 3 id., § 1890 (in reference to the Second Amendment's prefatory clause: The militia is the natural defence of a free country). It is true that the term State elsewhere in the Constitution refers to individual States, but the phrase security of a free state and close variations seem to have been terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a `free country' or free polity. See Volokh, Necessary to the Security of a Free State, 83 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1, 5 (2007); see, e.g., 4 Blackstone 151 (1769); Brutus Essay III (Nov. 15, 1787), in The Essential Antifederalist 251, 253 (W. Allen & G. Lloyd eds., 2d ed.2002). Moreover, the other instances of state in the Constitution are typically accompanied by modifiers making clear that the reference is to the several Stateseach state, several states, any state, that state, particular states, one state, no state. And the presence of the term foreign state in Article I and Article III shows that the word state did not have a single meaning in the Constitution. There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be necessary to the security of a free state. See 3 Story § 1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessaryan argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed.1961) (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.