Opinion ID: 2538783
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The United States Constitution Safeguards an Individual Right To Bear Arms and Applies to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause

Text: ¶ 8 The Second Amendment 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. U.S. Const. amend. II. The United States Supreme Court had not clarified whether the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms was an individual entitlement until Heller, the Court's first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2821. Heller unquestionably recognized an individual right to bear arms and, in the process, rejected a collective right conditioned on militia service. There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the First Amendment's right of free speech was not. Id. at 2799. We must answer whether the Second Amendment applies to the statesan issue Heller explicitly sidestepped. Id. at 2813 n. 23. ¶ 9 Incorporation is [t]he process of applying the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states by interpreting the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause as encompassing those provisions. Black's Law Dictionary 834 (9th ed.2009). The Fourteenth Amendment bars any state [from] depriv[ing] any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Under the original constitutional architecture the federal Bill of Rights protected only enumerated rights from federal interference. Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243, 247-51, 8 L.Ed. 672 (1833) (Marshall, C.J.). Today, however, the Supreme Court has applied nearly the entire Bill of Rights to the states through the due process clause. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 149, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968). Since 1897 the Supreme Court has progressively concluded most liberties protected by the Bill of Rights are incorporated. See, e.g., Chi., Burlington & Quincy R.R. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979 (1897) (holding due process clause prevents states from taking property without just compensation); Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 45 S.Ct. 625, 69 L.Ed. 1138 (1925) (incorporating First Amendment protection of free speech); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940) (incorporating First Amendment protection of free exercise of religion). [4] At this writing incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment is virtually complete. Pac. Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U.S. 1, 34, 111 S.Ct. 1032, 113 L.Ed.2d 1 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring). [5] ¶ 10 The early test for incorporation was whether the right was a fundamental principle of liberty and justice which adheres in the very idea of free government. Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 106, 29 S.Ct. 14, 53 L.Ed. 97 (1908), overruled on other grounds by Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964). Justice Cardozo later narrowed this test to incorporate rights only if it would be impossible to maintain a fair and enlightened system of justice without them. Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S.Ct. 149, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937), overruled on other grounds by Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 794, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969). [6] Today's more-permissive standard incorporates rights fundamental to the American scheme of justice, Duncan, 391 U.S. at 149, 88 S.Ct. 1444, that is, necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty. Id. at 149 n. 14, 88 S.Ct. 1444. Duncan weighs four factors to determine whether a Bill of Rights provision warrants incorporation: (1) the right's historical underpinning; (2) states' initial regard for the right, particularly in state constitutions; (3) recent trends and popular view regarding the right; and (4) purpose served by the right. Id. at 149-58, 88 S.Ct. 1444. ¶ 11 Although the Heller Court did not expressly consider incorporation of the right to bear arms, that need not stop the rest of us. Sanford Levinson, Comment, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637, 653-54 (1989). Lower courts need not wait for the Supreme Court to apply Duncan; the Constitution is the rule of all courtsboth state and federal judiciaries wield power to strike down unconstitutional government acts. [7] U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2; Nelson Lund, Anticipating Second Amendment Incorporation: The Role of Inferior Courts, 59 SYRACUSE L.REV. 185 (2008). We must ourselves determine whether the Second Amendment is incorporated. ¶ 12 The first Duncan factor demands historical analysis of the right to bear arms, with special attention to fundamental rights `deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.' Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720-21, 117 S.Ct. 2258, 138 L.Ed.2d 772 (1997) (quoting Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977) (plurality)). Gun ownership is an inexorable birthright of American tradition. Americans who participated in the Revolution of 1776 and adopted the Bill of Rights held the individual right to have and use arms against tyranny to be fundamental. [8] STEPHEN P. HALBROOK, THAT EVERY MAN BE ARMED: THE EVOLUTION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT 55 (1984). Moreover gun ownership was a universal legal duty of American colonists. Joyce Lee Malcolm, The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms: The Common Law Tradition, 10 Hastings Const. L.Q. 285, 290-95 (1983). ¶ 13 Heller analyzed the Second Amendment from preratification to the end of the 19th Century, concluding the right to bear arms is an individual right. The Court began by noting the 1689 Declaration of Rights included the right to bear arms. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2798. The Court added Blackstone, `the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,' id. at 2798 (quoting Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 715, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999)), considered the right to bear arms a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, 1 COMMENTARIES 144 (2d ed. 1766). The right to bear arms therefore flows from the absolute rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property. Id. at 140-41. The Federalist No. 46 describes the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation from the viewpoint of a fundamental right to self-defense. THE FEDERALIST No. 46, at 296 (James Madison) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 2003). By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2798. Heller severed the right to bear arms from service in a militia, foreclosing the only plausible argument against finding the right to be individual. ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637. ¶ 14 Heller also found universal support for an individual right to bear arms in pre-Civil War case law and commentary. Id. at 2808 (citing Aldridge v. Commonwealth, 4 Va. (2 Va. Cas.) 447, 449 (1824)). The most important early American editor of Blackstone's Commentaries called the right to bear arms the true palladium of liberty. WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, 1 COMMENTARIES ed.'s app. note D at  (Of the Constitution of the United States) (St. George Tucker ed. 1803). Thirteen of the 23 states admitted to the Union had Second Amendment analogues by 1820. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2802-03. [9] ¶ 15 The Heller Court also analyzed post-Civil War case law and commentary to conclude a key purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to ensure freed blacks had the right to keep and bear arms. Id. at 2810-11; see generally STEPHEN P. HALBROOK, FREEDMEN, THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, 1866-1876 (1998). The Fourteenth Amendment transcended race and region, it challenged legal discrimination throughout the nation and changed and broadened the meaning of freedom for all Americans. ERIC FONER, RECONSTRUCTION: AMERICA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION, 1863-1877, at 257-58 (1988); see also AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION: A BIOGRAPHY 390-91 (2005). ¶ 16 Indeed reconstruction Republicans sought to empower black freedmen to resist oppression at the hands of resurgent white supremacists in the South. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2810 (citing congressional findings as reported in The Local Georgian, a weekly newspaper, that `[a]ll men, without distinction of color, have the right to keep and bear arms to defend their homes, families or themselves' (alteration in original)). `The right to bear arms has always been the distinctive privilege of freemen. Aside from any necessity of self-protection to the person, it represents among all nations power coupled with the exercise of a certain jurisdiction.' Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2812 (quoting JOHN ORDRONAUX, CONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES 241 (1891)). ¶ 17 Accordingly we regard the history, lineage, and pedigree of the Second Amendment right to bear arms necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty and fundamental to the American scheme of justice. It is deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. ¶ 18 The second Duncan factor calls for states' historical consideration of the right to bear arms. 391 U.S. at 153-54, 88 S.Ct. 1444. Certainly our state constitution, like many others, guarantees an individual right to bear arms. Article I, section 24 of the Washington Constitution declares: RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men. Heller confirms the right to bear arms is an individual right. While textually different from the Second Amendment, many state analogs nonetheless reveal a similar sentimentas ours certainly does. ¶ 19 Forty-four state constitutions explicitly recognize the right to keep and bear arms and [n]early all secure (at least in part) an individual right to keep some kinds of guns for self-defense. Eugene Volokh, State Constitutional Rights to Keep and Bear Arms, 11 TEX. REV. L. & POL. 191, 192 (2006); see also CLAYTON E. CRAMER, FOR THE DEFENSE OF THEMSELVES AND THE STATE: THE ORIGINAL INTENT AND JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION OF THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS 221-67 (1994). The right was considered essential in the colonies and by the original states. JOYCE LEE MALCOLM, TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS: THE ORIGINS OF AN ANGLO-AMERICAN RIGHT 139 (1994). Despite a diversity of colonial settings, each with its `richly textured pattern of legal institutions and activity,' the approach to private arms ownership and the employment of an armed citizenry was remarkably uniform from colony to colony. Id. at 138-39 (quoting KERMIT L. HALL, THE MAGIC MIRROR: LAW IN AMERICAN HISTORY 14 (1989)). The dangers all the colonies faced . . . were so great that not only militia members but all householders were ordered to be armed. Id. at 139. ¶ 20 Third under Duncan, whether the right continues to receive strong support today focuses on whether recent precedent forecloses incorporation. Duncan, 391 U.S. at 154, 88 S.Ct. 1444. In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. (2 Otto) 542, 23 L.Ed. 588 (1875) and Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 6 S.Ct. 580, 29 L.Ed. 615 (1886), the United States Supreme Court declined to apply the Second Amendment to the states because the Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall) 36, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1872), precluded the application of the Bill of Rights to the states via the privileges and immunities clause, not the due process clause. [10] Moreover these precedents did not foreclose incorporation because each predated selective incorporation, first articulated in 1897. See Chi., Burlington & Quincy R.R., 166 U.S. 226, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979. Thus we decline to rely on these cases for the proposition that the Second Amendment is not an expression of part of the process due every person by state government. The first incorporation decision, Chicago, B. & Q.R. Co. v. Chicago, was not delivered until eleven years after Presser; one therefore cannot know if the judges in Cruikshank and Presser were willing to concede that any of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights were anything more than limitations on congressional or other national power. Levinson, supra, at 653 (footnote omitted); William Van Alstyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms, 43 DUKE L.J. 1236, 1239 n. 10 (1994); accord Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2813 n. 23 (noting,  Cruikshank . . . did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases). Moreover Cruikshank merely held the federal Constitution does not apply to private individuals: The only obligation resting upon the United States is to see that the states do not deny the right. This the [Fourteenth] amendment guarantees, but no more. The power of the national government is limited to the enforcement of this guaranty. 92 U.S. at 554-55, 2 Otto 542. Courts that rely on this precedent misunderstand its holding. [11] Because Cruikshank and Presser predate the Supreme Court's process of selectively applying the Bill of Rights to the states under Duncan, they cannot impede the current incorporation doctrine. ¶ 21 Nevertheless in early 2009 the Second Circuit puzzlingly and reluctantly relied on Presser to reject incorporation. Maloney v. Cuomo, 554 F.3d 56 (2d Cir.2009). [12] In a per curiam opinion the court stated it was forced to follow Presser because `the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to the Supreme Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.' Id. at 59 (quoting Bach v. Pataki, 408 F.3d 75, 86 (2d Cir.2005)). Again Presser predates the incorporation doctrine and said nothing about the Second Amendment's meaning or scope, beyond the fact that it does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2813. Presser cannot directly control when the issue is the very reach of incorporation under the due process clause a doctrine it never addressed. Moreover Maloney upheld New York's ban on martial-arts nunchaku [13] based on rational basis review, a standard specifically rejected by the Supreme Court in Heller. Id. at 2817 n. 27; cf. Maloney, 554 F.3d at 59. ¶ 22 The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently labeled Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535, 14 S.Ct. 874, 38 L.Ed. 812 (1894), obsolete and defunct. Nat'l Rifle Ass'n of Am., Inc. v. City of Chicago, 567 F.3d 856, 857-58 (7th Cir.), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 48, 174 L.Ed.2d 632 (2009). Nevertheless the court followed Maloney to not apply the Second Amendment to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment privileges and immunities clause. The Seventh Circuit felt its hands tied by Supreme Court holdings even if the reasoning in later opinions has undermined their rationale. Id. at 857. ¶ 23 On the other hand a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit recently abandoned Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller v. Texas as obsolete. Nordyke v. King, 563 F.3d 439 (9th Cir.2009). But on July 29, 2009 the court voted to rehear the matter en banc. Although it cannot be cited as precedent by or to any court of the Ninth Circuit, Nordyke v. King, 575 F.3d 890, 891 (9th Cir.2009) ( Nordyke II ), the panel decision persuasively applied the Second Amendment to the states via the due process clause. The crucial role this deeply rooted right [to keep and bear arms] has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited. Nordyke, 563 F.3d at 457. [14] While Nordyke enjoys no precedential value, it nonetheless contributes to Duncan's third prong by signaling courts' current interpretation of the Second Amendment. ¶ 24 Notwithstanding Heller the United States Supreme Court's most recent in-depth examination of the Second Amendment occurred in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206 (1939). Like Presser and Cruikshank we question the relevance of United States v. Miller to the instant matter, albeit for different reasons. Miller concerned the constitutionality of a federal regulation barring interstate transport of, for example, an unregistered sawed-off shotgun. The Court upheld the federal regulation stating, [i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a `shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Id. at 178, 59 S.Ct. 816. Miller's holding stands for the proposition and little morethat certain types of weapons are not linked to militia service. See Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2814; Brian L. Frye, The Peculiar Story of United States v. Miller, 3 N.Y.U. J.L. & LIBERTY 48, 75-77 (2008). Accordingly United States v. Miller does not touch the instant matter. ¶ 25 Lastly, the purpose served by the right to bear arms supports incorporation. Heller made plain the Second Amendment's grammatical structure; its text is comprised of prefatory and operative clauses. Heller, 128 S.Ct. at 2789. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose.  Id. (emphasis added). Namely, the amendment's purpose is `the security of a free State.' Id. (quoting U.S. CONST. amend. II). This broad concept encompasses at least two prongs: (1) protection against governmental or military tyranny and (2) self-protection. See, e.g., William C. Plouffe, Jr., A Federal Court Holds the Second Amendment is an Individual Right: Jeffersonian Utopia or Apocalypse Now?, 30 U. MEM. L.REV. 55, 87-89 (1999); Scott Bursor, Note, Toward a Functional Framework for Interpreting the Second Amendment, 74 TEX. L.REV. 1125, 1134-37 (1996). While the latter arguably finds more relevance today, both underlie the Second Amendment and support its application to the states. ¶ 26 Pursuant to Duncan the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms from state interference through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This right is necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty and fundamental to the American scheme of justice.