Opinion ID: 835750
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: English History

Text: 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, 614 P.2d 94. 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, 614 P.2d 94, 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 102-04. 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, 614 P.2d 94. 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 & 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 & 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 & 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. & 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, 63 Ohio St. 202, 58 N.E. 572 (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 impromptu army in case of foreign invasion of their shire. Kates, 82 Mich. L. Rev. at 214-15.