District of Columbia v. Heller

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2007 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

No. 07–290. Argued March 18, 2008—Decided June 26, 2008

District of Columbia law bans handgun possession by making it a crime

to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibiting the registration of

handguns; provides separately that no person may carry an unli-

censed handgun, but authorizes the police chief to issue 1-year li-

censes; and requires residents to keep lawfully owned firearms

unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar de-

vice. Respondent Heller, a D. C. special policeman, applied to regis-

ter a handgun he wished to keep at home, but the District refused.

He filed this suit seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin

the city from enforcing the bar on handgun registration, the licensing

requirement insofar as it prohibits carrying an unlicensed firearm in

the home, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the

use of functional firearms in the home. The District Court dismissed

the suit, but the D. C. Circuit reversed, holding that the Second

Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms and

that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that

firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for

self-defense, violated that right.

Held:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a

firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for

traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Pp. 2–53.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but

does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative

clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it

connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.

(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation

2 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Syllabus

of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically

capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederal-

ists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in

order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing

army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress

power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear

arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.

Pp. 22–28.

(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-

bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately

followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.

(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious

interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals

that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms.

Pp. 30–32.

(e) Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts

and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the

late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion. Pp. 32–47.

(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpre-

tation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553, nor

Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 264–265, refutes the individual-

rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not

limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather

limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by

the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes. Pp. 47–54.

2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.

It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any

manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, con-

cealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment

or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast

doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by

felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of fire-

arms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or

laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of

arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those

“in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition

of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

Pp. 54–56.

3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to

self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban

on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an

entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the

lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scru-

tiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3

Syllabus

prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense

of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional

muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the

home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible

for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and

is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument

that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbi-

trarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy

his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement.

Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment

rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and

must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.

478 F. 3d 370, affirmed.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,

C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a

dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ.,

joined. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS,

SOUTER, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash­

ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 07–290

_________________

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ET AL., PETITIONERS v.

DICK ANTHONY HELLER

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

[June 26, 2008]

JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

We consider whether a District of Columbia prohibition

on the possession of usable handguns in the home violates

the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

I

The District of Columbia generally prohibits the posses­

sion of handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered

firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited.

See D. C. Code §§7–2501.01(12), 7–2502.01(a), 7–

2502.02(a)(4) (2001). Wholly apart from that prohibition,

no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the

chief of police may issue licenses for 1-year periods. See

§§22–4504(a), 22–4506. District of Columbia law also

requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms,

such as registered long guns, “unloaded and disassembled

or bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless they

are located in a place of business or are being used for

lawful recreational activities. See §7–2507.02.1

——————

1 There are minor exceptions to all of these prohibitions, none of

which is relevant here.

2 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

Respondent Dick Heller is a D. C. special police officer

authorized to carry a handgun while on duty at the Fed­

eral Judicial Center. He applied for a registration certifi­

cate for a handgun that he wished to keep at home, but

the District refused. He thereafter filed a lawsuit in the

Federal District Court for the District of Columbia seek­

ing, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city

from enforcing the bar on the registration of handguns,

the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits the carry­

ing of a firearm in the home without a license, and the

trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of

“functional firearms within the home.” App. 59a. The

District Court dismissed respondent’s complaint, see

Parker v. District of Columbia, 311 F. Supp. 2d 103, 109

(2004). The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

Circuit, construing his complaint as seeking the right to

render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in

that condition only when necessary for self-defense,2 re­

versed, see Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F. 3d 370,

401 (2007). It held that the Second Amendment protects

an individual right to possess firearms and that the city’s

total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that

firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when

necessary for self-defense, violated that right. See id., at

395, 399–401. The Court of Appeals directed the District

Court to enter summary judgment for respondent.

We granted certiorari. 552 U. S. ___ (2007).

II

We turn first to the meaning of the Second Amendment.

A

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

——————

2 That construction has not been challenged here.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3

Opinion of the Court

infringed.” In interpreting this text, we are guided by the

principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be under­

stood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in

their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical

meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731

(1931); see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824).

Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic

meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that

would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the

founding generation.

The two sides in this case have set out very different

interpretations of the Amendment. Petitioners and to­

day’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the

right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with

militia service. See Brief for Petitioners 11–12; post, at 1

(STEVENS, J., dissenting). Respondent argues that it

protects an individual right to possess a firearm uncon­

nected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for

traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within

the home. See Brief for Respondent 2–4.

The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two

parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The

former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather

announces a purpose. The Amendment could be re­

phrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to

the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep

and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” See J. Tiffany, A

Treatise on Government and Constitutional Law §585,

p. 394 (1867); Brief for Professors of Linguistics and Eng­

lish as Amici Curiae 3 (hereinafter Linguists’ Brief).

Although this structure of the Second Amendment is

unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the

founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of

state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory state­

ment of purpose. See generally Volokh, The Commonplace

Second Amendment, 73 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 793, 814–821

4 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

(1998).

Logic demands that there be a link between the stated

purpose and the command. The Second Amendment

would be nonsensical if it read, “A well regulated Militia,

being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of

the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be

infringed.” That requirement of logical connection may

cause a prefatory clause to resolve an ambiguity in the

operative clause (“The separation of church and state

being an important objective, the teachings of canons shall

have no place in our jurisprudence.” The preface makes

clear that the operative clause refers not to canons of

interpretation but to clergymen.) But apart from that

clarifying function, a prefatory clause does not limit or

expand the scope of the operative clause. See F. Dwarris,

A General Treatise on Statutes 268–269 (P. Potter ed.

1871) (hereinafter Dwarris); T. Sedgwick, The Interpreta­

tion and Construction of Statutory and Constitutional Law

42–45 (2d ed. 1874).3 “ ‘It is nothing unusual in acts . . . for

the enacting part to go beyond the preamble; the remedy

often extends beyond the particular act or mischief which

first suggested the necessity of the law.’ ” J. Bishop,

——————

3 As Sutherland explains, the key 18th-century English case on the

effect of preambles, Copeman v. Gallant, 1 P. Wms. 314, 24 Eng. Rep.

404 (1716), stated that “the preamble could not be used to restrict the

effect of the words of the purview.” J. Sutherland, Statutes and Statu­

tory Construction, 47.04 (N. Singer ed. 5th ed. 1992). This rule was

modified in England in an 1826 case to give more importance to the

preamble, but in America “the settled principle of law is that the

preamble cannot control the enacting part of the statute in cases where

the enacting part is expressed in clear, unambiguous terms.” Ibid.

JUSTICE STEVENS says that we violate the general rule that every

clause in a statute must have effect. Post, at 8. But where the text of a

clause itself indicates that it does not have operative effect, such as

“whereas” clauses in federal legislation or the Constitution’s preamble,

a court has no license to make it do what it was not designed to do. Or

to put the point differently, operative provisions should be given effect

as operative provisions, and prologues as prologues.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 5

Opinion of the Court

Commentaries on Written Laws and Their Interpretation

§51, p. 49 (1882) (quoting Rex v. Marks, 3 East, 157, 165

(K. B. 1802)). Therefore, while we will begin our textual

analysis with the operative clause, we will return to the

prefatory clause to ensure that our reading of the opera­

tive clause is consistent with the announced purpose.4

1. Operative Clause.

a. “Right of the People.” The first salient feature of

the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the peo­

ple.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights

use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the

First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in

the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The

Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (“The

enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall

not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by

the people”). All three of these instances unambiguously

refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights, or rights

that may be exercised only through participation in some

corporate body.5

——————

4 JUSTICE STEVENS criticizes us for discussing the prologue last. Post,

at 8. But if a prologue can be used only to clarify an ambiguous opera­

tive provision, surely the first step must be to determine whether the

operative provision is ambiguous. It might be argued, we suppose, that

the prologue itself should be one of the factors that go into the determi­

nation of whether the operative provision is ambiguous—but that

would cause the prologue to be used to produce ambiguity rather than

just to resolve it. In any event, even if we considered the prologue

along with the operative provision we would reach the same result we

do today, since (as we explain) our interpretation of “the right of the

people to keep and bear arms” furthers the purpose of an effective

militia no less than (indeed, more than) the dissent’s interpretation.

See infra, at 26–27.

5 JUSTICE STEVENS is of course correct, post, at 10, that the right to

assemble cannot be exercised alone, but it is still an individual right,

and not one conditioned upon membership in some defined “assembly,”

as he contends the right to bear arms is conditioned upon membership

6 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people”

in a context other than “rights”—the famous preamble

(“We the people”), §2 of Article I (providing that “the peo­

ple” will choose members of the House), and the Tenth

Amendment (providing that those powers not given the

Federal Government remain with “the States” or “the

people”). Those provisions arguably refer to “the people”

acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or

reservation of powers, not rights. Nowhere else in the

Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer

to anything other than an individual right.6

What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitu­

tion that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously

refers to all members of the political community, not an

unspecified subset. As we said in United States v. Ver-

dugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 265 (1990):

“ ‘[T]he people’ seems to have been a term of art em­

ployed in select parts of the Constitution. . . . [Its

uses] sugges[t] that ‘the people’ protected by the

——————

in a defined militia. And JUSTICE STEVENS is dead wrong to think that

the right to petition is “primarily collective in nature.” Ibid. See

McDonald v. Smith, 472 U. S. 479, 482–484 (1985) (describing histori­

cal origins of right to petition).

6 If we look to other founding-era documents, we find that some state

constitutions used the term “the people” to refer to the people collec­

tively, in contrast to “citizen,” which was used to invoke individual

rights. See Heyman, Natural Rights and the Second Amendment, in

The Second Amendment in Law and History 179, 193–195 (C. Bogus

ed. 2000) (hereinafter Bogus). But that usage was not remotely uni­

form. See, e.g., N. C. Declaration of Rights §XIV (1776), in 5 The

Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic

Laws 2787, 2788 (F. Thorpe ed. 1909) (hereinafter Thorpe) (jury trial);

Md. Declaration of Rights §XVIII (1776), in 3 id., at 1686, 1688 (vici­

nage requirement); Vt. Declaration of Rights ch. 1, §XI (1777), in 6 id.,

at 3737, 3741 (searches and seizures); Pa. Declaration of Rights §XII

(1776), in 5 id., at 3081, 3083 (free speech). And, most importantly, it

was clearly not the terminology used in the Federal Constitution, given

the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 7

Opinion of the Court

Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second

Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are re­

served in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to

a class of persons who are part of a national commu­

nity or who have otherwise developed sufficient con­

nection with this country to be considered part of that

community.”

This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in

the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the “mili­

tia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the peo­

ple”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a

certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as

protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an

organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative

clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the

people.”

We start therefore with a strong presumption that the

Second Amendment right is exercised individually and

belongs to all Americans.

b. “Keep and bear Arms.” We move now from the

holder of the right—“the people”—to the substance of the

right: “to keep and bear Arms.”

Before addressing the verbs “keep” and “bear,” we inter­

pret their object: “Arms.” The 18th-century meaning is no

different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of

Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined “arms” as “weapons

of offence, or armour of defence.” 1 Dictionary of the

English Language 107 (4th ed.) (hereinafter Johnson).

Timothy Cunningham’s important 1771 legal dictionary

defined “arms” as “any thing that a man wears for his

defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast

at or strike another.” 1 A New and Complete Law Dic­

tionary (1771); see also N. Webster, American Dictionary

of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1989) (hereinaf­

ter Webster) (similar).

8 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that

were not specifically designed for military use and were

not employed in a military capacity. For instance, Cun­

ningham’s legal dictionary gave as an example of usage:

“Servants and labourers shall use bows and arrows on

Sundays, &c. and not bear other arms.” See also, e.g., An

Act for the trial of Negroes, 1797 Del. Laws ch. XLIII, §6,

p. 104, in 1 First Laws of the State of Delaware 102, 104

(J. Cushing ed. 1981 (pt. 1)); see generally State v. Duke,

42 Tex. 455, 458 (1874) (citing decisions of state courts

construing “arms”). Although one founding-era thesaurus

limited “arms” (as opposed to “weapons”) to “instruments

of offence generally made use of in war,” even that source

stated that all firearms constituted “arms.” 1 J. Trusler,

The Distinction Between Words Esteemed Synonymous in

the English Language 37 (1794) (emphasis added).

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivo­

lous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century

are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not in­

terpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First

Amendment protects modern forms of communications,

e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844,

849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern

forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27,

35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima

facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms,

even those that were not in existence at the time of the

founding.

We turn to the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms.”

Johnson defined “keep” as, most relevantly, “[t]o retain;

not to lose,” and “[t]o have in custody.” Johnson 1095.

Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or

possession.” No party has apprised us of an idiomatic

meaning of “keep Arms.” Thus, the most natural reading

of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have

weapons.”

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 9

Opinion of the Court

The phrase “keep arms” was not prevalent in the writ­

ten documents of the founding period that we have found,

but there are a few examples, all of which favor viewing

the right to “keep Arms” as an individual right uncon­

nected with militia service. William Blackstone, for ex­

ample, wrote that Catholics convicted of not attending

service in the Church of England suffered certain penal­

ties, one of which was that they were not permitted to

“keep arms in their houses.” 4 Commentaries on the Laws

of England 55 (1769) (hereinafter Blackstone); see also 1

W. & M., c. 15, §4, in 3 Eng. Stat. at Large 422 (1689)

(“[N]o Papist . . . shall or may have or keep in his House

. . . any Arms . . . ”); 1 Hawkins, Treatise on the Pleas of

the Crown 26 (1771) (similar). Petitioners point to militia

laws of the founding period that required militia members

to “keep” arms in connection with militia service, and they

conclude from this that the phrase “keep Arms” has a

militia-related connotation. See Brief for Petitioners 16–

17 (citing laws of Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia).

This is rather like saying that, since there are many stat­

utes that authorize aggrieved employees to “file com­

plaints” with federal agencies, the phrase “file complaints”

has an employment-related connotation. “Keep arms” was

simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for

militiamen and everyone else.7

——————

7 See, e.g., 3 A Compleat Collection of State-Tryals 185 (1719) (“Hath

not every Subject power to keep Arms, as well as Servants in his House

for defence of his Person?”); T. Wood, A New Institute of the Imperial or

Civil Law 282 (1730) (“Those are guilty of publick Force, who keep

Arms in their Houses, and make use of them otherwise than upon

Journeys or Hunting, or for Sale . . .”); A Collection of All the Acts of

Assembly, Now in Force, in the Colony of Virginia 596 (1733) (“Free

Negros, Mulattos, or Indians, and Owners of Slaves, seated at Frontier

Plantations, may obtain Licence from a Justice of Peace, for keeping

Arms, &c.”); J. Ayliffe, A New Pandect of Roman Civil Law 195 (1734)

(“Yet a Person might keep Arms in his House, or on his Estate, on the

Account of Hunting, Navigation, Travelling, and on the Score of Selling

10 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to

“carry.” See Johnson 161; Webster; T. Sheridan, A Com­

plete Dictionary of the English Language (1796); 2 Oxford

English Dictionary 20 (2d ed. 1989) (hereinafter Oxford).

When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning

that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—

confrontation. In Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S.

125 (1998), in the course of analyzing the meaning of

“carries a firearm” in a federal criminal statute, JUSTICE

GINSBURG wrote that “[s]urely a most familiar meaning is,

as the Constitution’s Second Amendment . . . indicate[s]:

‘wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing

or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and

ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict

with another person.’ ” Id., at 143 (dissenting opinion)

——————

them in the way of Trade or Commerce, or such Arms as accrued to him

by way of Inheritance”); J. Trusler, A Concise View of the Common Law

and Statute Law of England 270 (1781) (“if [papists] keep arms in their

houses, such arms may be seized by a justice of the peace”); Some

Considerations on the Game Laws 54 (1796) (“Who has been deprived

by [the law] of keeping arms for his own defence? What law forbids the

veriest pauper, if he can raise a sum sufficient for the purchase of it,

from mounting his Gun on his Chimney Piece . . . ?”); 3 B. Wilson, The

Works of the Honourable James Wilson 84 (1804) (with reference to

state constitutional right: “This is one of our many renewals of the

Saxon regulations. ‘They were bound,’ says Mr. Selden, ‘to keep arms

for the preservation of the kingdom, and of their own person’ ”); W.

Duer, Outlines of the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States

31–32 (1833) (with reference to colonists’ English rights: “The right of

every individual to keep arms for his defence, suitable to his condition

and degree; which was the public allowance, under due restrictions of

the natural right of resistance and self-preservation”); 3 R. Burn,

Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer 88 (1815) (“It is, however,

laid down by Serjeant Hawkins, . . . that if a lessee, after the end of the

term, keep arms in his house to oppose the entry of the lessor, . . .”);

State v. Dempsey, 31 N. C. 384, 385 (1849) (citing 1840 state law

making it a misdemeanor for a member of certain racial groups “to

carry about his person or keep in his house any shot gun or other

arms”).

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 11

Opinion of the Court

(quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 214 (6th ed. 1998)). We

think that JUSTICE GINSBURG accurately captured the

natural meaning of “bear arms.” Although the phrase

implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the purpose

of “offensive or defensive action,” it in no way connotes

participation in a structured military organization.

From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude

that this natural meaning was also the meaning that

“bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous in­

stances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to

the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.

The most prominent examples are those most relevant to

the Second Amendment: Nine state constitutional provi­

sions written in the 18th century or the first two decades

of the 19th, which enshrined a right of citizens to “bear

arms in defense of themselves and the state” or “bear arms

in defense of himself and the state.” 8 It is clear from those

formulations that “bear arms” did not refer only to carry­

——————

8 See Pa. Declaration of Rights §XIII, in 5 Thorpe 3083 (“That the

people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the

state. . . ”); Vt. Declaration of Rights §XV, in 6 id., at 3741 (“That the

people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the

State. . .”); Ky. Const., Art. XII, cl. 23 (1792), in 3 id., at 1264, 1275

(“That the right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves

and the State shall not be questioned”); Ohio Const., Art. VIII, §20

(1802), in 5 id., at 2901, 2911 (“That the people have a right to bear

arms for the defence of themselves and the State . . . ”); Ind. Const., Art.

I, §20 (1816), in 2 id., at 1057, 1059 (“That the people have a right to

bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State. . . ”); Miss.

Const., Art. I, §23 (1817), in 4 id., at 2032, 2034 (“Every citizen has a

right to bear arms, in defence of himself and the State”); Conn. Const.,

Art. I, §17 (1818), in 1 id., at 536, 538 (“Every citizen has a right to bear

arms in defence of himself and the state”); Ala. Const., Art. I, §23

(1819), in 1 id., at 96, 98 (“Every citizen has a right to bear arms in

defence of himself and the State”); Mo. Const., Art. XIII, §3 (1820), in 4

id., at 2150, 2163 (“[T]hat their right to bear arms in defence of them­

selves and of the State cannot be questioned”). See generally Volokh,

State Constitutional Rights to Keep and Bear Arms, 11 Tex. Rev. L. &

Politics 191 (2006).

12 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

ing a weapon in an organized military unit. Justice James

Wilson interpreted the Pennsylvania Constitution’s arms-

bearing right, for example, as a recognition of the natural

right of defense “of one’s person or house”—what he called

the law of “self preservation.” 2 Collected Works of James

Wilson 1142, and n. x (K. Hall & M. Hall eds. 2007) (citing

Pa. Const., Art. IX, §21 (1790)); see also T. Walker, Intro­

duction to American Law 198 (1837) (“Thus the right of

self-defence [is] guaranteed by the [Ohio] constitution”);

see also id., at 157 (equating Second Amendment with

that provision of the Ohio Constitution). That was also

the interpretation of those state constitutional provisions

adopted by pre-Civil War state courts.9 These provisions

demonstrate—again, in the most analogous linguistic

context—that “bear arms” was not limited to the carrying

of arms in a militia.

The phrase “bear Arms” also had at the time of the

founding an idiomatic meaning that was significantly

different from its natural meaning: “to serve as a soldier,

do military service, fight” or “to wage war.” See Linguists’

Brief 18; post, at 11 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). But it

unequivocally bore that idiomatic meaning only when

followed by the preposition “against,” which was in turn

followed by the target of the hostilities. See 2 Oxford 21.

(That is how, for example, our Declaration of Independ­

ence ¶28, used the phrase: “He has constrained our fellow

Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms

against their Country . . . .”) Every example given by

petitioners’ amici for the idiomatic meaning of “bear arms”

——————

9 See Bliss v. Commonwealth, 2 Litt. 90, 91–92 (Ky. 1822); State v.

Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616–617 (1840); State v. Schoultz, 25 Mo. 128, 155

(1857); see also Simpson v. State, 5 Yer. 356, 360 (Tenn. 1833) (inter­

preting similar provision with “common defence” purpose); State v.

Huntly, 25 N. C. 418, 422–423 (1843) (same); cf. Nunn v. State, 1 Ga.

243, 250–251 (1846) (construing Second Amendment); State v. Chan-

dler, 5 La. Ann. 489, 489–490 (1850) (same).

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 13

Opinion of the Court

from the founding period either includes the preposition

“against” or is not clearly idiomatic. See Linguists’ Brief

18–23. Without the preposition, “bear arms” normally

meant (as it continues to mean today) what JUSTICE

GINSBURG’s opinion in Muscarello said.

In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petition­

ers and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (some­

times) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a

hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the

actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an

idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No

dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have

been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried

that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy

to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the

hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic mean­

ing would cause the protected right to consist of the right

to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no

commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of

the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase

“keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word

“Arms” would have two different meanings at once:

“weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of

“bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like say­

ing “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled

the bucket and died.” Grotesque.

Petitioners justify their limitation of “bear arms” to the

military context by pointing out the unremarkable fact

that it was often used in that context—the same mistake

they made with respect to “keep arms.” It is especially

unremarkable that the phrase was often used in a military

context in the federal legal sources (such as records of

congressional debate) that have been the focus of petition­

ers’ inquiry. Those sources would have had little occasion

to use it except in discussions about the standing army and

the militia. And the phrases used primarily in those

14 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

military discussions include not only “bear arms” but also

“carry arms,” “possess arms,” and “have arms”—though no

one thinks that those other phrases also had special mili­

tary meanings. See Barnett, Was the Right to Keep and

Bear Arms Conditioned on Service in an Organized Mili­

tia?, 83 Tex. L. Rev. 237, 261 (2004). The common refer­

ences to those “fit to bear arms” in congressional discus­

sions about the militia are matched by use of the same

phrase in the few nonmilitary federal contexts where the

concept would be relevant. See, e.g., 30 Journals of Conti­

nental Congress 349–351 (J. Fitzpatrick ed. 1934). Other

legal sources frequently used “bear arms” in nonmilitary

contexts.10 Cunningham’s legal dictionary, cited above,

——————

10 See J. Brydall, Privilegia Magnatud apud Anglos 14 (1704) (Privi­

lege XXXIII) (“In the 21st Year of King Edward the Third, a Proclama­

tion Issued, that no Person should bear any Arms within London, and

the Suburbs”); J. Bond, A Compleat Guide to Justices of the Peace 43

(1707) (“Sheriffs, and all other Officers in executing their Offices, and

all other persons pursuing Hu[e] and Cry may lawfully bear arms”); 1

An Abridgment of the Public Statutes in Force and Use Relative to

Scotland (1755) (entry for “Arms”: “And if any person above described

shall have in his custody, use, or bear arms, being thereof convicted

before one justice of peace, or other judge competent, summarily, he

shall for the first offense forfeit all such arms” (quoting 1 Geo. 1, c. 54,

§1)); Statute Law of Scotland Abridged 132–133 (2d ed. 1769) (“Acts for

disarming the highlands” but “exempting those who have particular

licenses to bear arms”); E. de Vattel, The Law of Nations, or, Principles

of the Law of Nature 144 (1792) (“Since custom has allowed persons of

rank and gentlemen of the army to bear arms in time of peace, strict

care should be taken that none but these should be allowed to wear

swords”); E. Roche, Proceedings of a Court-Martial, Held at the Coun­

cil-Chamber, in the City of Cork 3 (1798) (charge VI: “With having held

traitorous conferences, and with having conspired, with the like intent,

for the purpose of attacking and despoiling of the arms of several of the

King’s subjects, qualified by law to bear arms”); C. Humphreys, A

Compendium of the Common Law in force in Kentucky 482 (1822) (“[I]n

this country the constitution guaranties to all persons the right to bear

arms; then it can only be a crime to exercise this right in such a man­

ner, as to terrify people unnecessarily”).

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 15

Opinion of the Court

gave as an example of its usage a sentence unrelated to

military affairs (“Servants and labourers shall use bows

and arrows on Sundays, &c. and not bear other arms”).

And if one looks beyond legal sources, “bear arms” was

frequently used in nonmilitary contexts. See Cramer &

Olson, What Did “Bear Arms” Mean in the Second Amend­

ment?, 6 Georgetown J. L. & Pub. Pol’y (forthcoming Sept.

2008), online at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1086176

(as visited June 24, 2008, and available in Clerk of Court’s

case file) (identifying numerous nonmilitary uses of “bear

arms” from the founding period).

JUSTICE STEVENS points to a study by amici supposedly

showing that the phrase “bear arms” was most frequently

used in the military context. See post, at 12–13, n. 9;

Linguists’ Brief 24. Of course, as we have said, the fact

that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context

does not show that it is limited to that context, and, in any

event, we have given many sources where the phrase was

used in nonmilitary contexts. Moreover, the study’s collec­

tion appears to include (who knows how many times) the

idiomatic phrase “bear arms against,” which is irrelevant.

The amici also dismiss examples such as “ ‘bear arms . . .

for the purpose of killing game’ ” because those uses are

“expressly qualified.” Linguists’ Brief 24. (JUSTICE

STEVENS uses the same excuse for dismissing the state

constitutional provisions analogous to the Second Amend­

ment that identify private-use purposes for which the

individual right can be asserted. See post, at 12.) That

analysis is faulty. A purposive qualifying phrase that

contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this

side of the looking glass (except, apparently, in some

courses on Linguistics). If “bear arms” means, as we

think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit

the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of self-

defense” or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear

arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the

16 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply

cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to

carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game”

is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive quali­

fying phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is

not limited to military use.11

JUSTICE STEVENS places great weight on James Madi­

son’s inclusion of a conscientious-objector clause in his

original draft of the Second Amendment: “but no person

religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled

to render military service in person.” Creating the Bill of

Rights 12 (H. Veit, K. Bowling, & C. Bickford eds. 1991)

(hereinafter Veit). He argues that this clause establishes

that the drafters of the Second Amendment intended “bear

Arms” to refer only to military service. See post, at 26. It

is always perilous to derive the meaning of an adopted

provision from another provision deleted in the drafting

process.12 In any case, what JUSTICE STEVENS would

conclude from the deleted provision does not follow. It was

not meant to exempt from military service those who

——————

11 JUSTICE STEVENS contends, post, at 15, that since we assert that

adding “against” to “bear arms” gives it a military meaning we must

concede that adding a purposive qualifying phrase to “bear arms” can

alter its meaning. But the difference is that we do not maintain that

“against” alters the meaning of “bear arms” but merely that it clarifies

which of various meanings (one of which is military) is intended.

JUSTICE STEVENS, however, argues that “[t]he term ‘bear arms’ is a

familiar idiom; when used unadorned by any additional words, its

meaning is ‘to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight.’ ” Post, at

11. He therefore must establish that adding a contradictory purposive

phrase can alter a word’s meaning.

12 JUSTICE STEVENS finds support for his legislative history inference

from the recorded views of one Antifederalist member of the House.

Post, at 26 n. 25. “The claim that the best or most representative

reading of the [language of the] amendments would conform to the

understanding and concerns of [the Antifederalists] is . . . highly

problematic.” Rakove, The Second Amendment: The Highest Stage of

Originalism, Bogus 74, 81.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 17

Opinion of the Court

objected to going to war but had no scruples about per­

sonal gunfights. Quakers opposed the use of arms not just

for militia service, but for any violent purpose whatso­

ever—so much so that Quaker frontiersmen were forbid­

den to use arms to defend their families, even though “[i]n

such circumstances the temptation to seize a hunting rifle

or knife in self-defense . . . must sometimes have been

almost overwhelming.” P. Brock, Pacifism in the United

States 359 (1968); see M. Hirst, The Quakers in Peace and

War 336–339 (1923); 3 T. Clarkson, Portraiture of Quaker­

ism 103–104 (3d ed. 1807). The Pennsylvania Militia Act

of 1757 exempted from service those “scrupling the use of

arms”—a phrase that no one contends had an idiomatic

meaning. See 5 Stat. at Large of Pa. 613 (J. Mitchell & H.

Flanders eds. 1898) (emphasis added). Thus, the most

natural interpretation of Madison’s deleted text is that

those opposed to carrying weapons for potential violent

confrontation would not be “compelled to render military

service,” in which such carrying would be required.13

Finally, JUSTICE STEVENS suggests that “keep and bear

Arms” was some sort of term of art, presumably akin to

“hue and cry” or “cease and desist.” (This suggestion

usefully evades the problem that there is no evidence

whatsoever to support a military reading of “keep arms.”)

JUSTICE STEVENS believes that the unitary meaning of

——————

13 The same applies to the conscientious-objector amendments pro­

posed by Virginia and North Carolina, which said: “That any person

religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted upon

payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead.”

See Veit 19; 4 J. Eliot, The Debates in the Several State Constitutions

on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 243, 244 (2d ed. 1836)

(reprinted 1941). Certainly their second use of the phrase (“bear arms

in his stead”) refers, by reason of context, to compulsory bearing of

arms for military duty. But their first use of the phrase (“any person

religiously scrupulous of bearing arms”) assuredly did not refer to

people whose God allowed them to bear arms for defense of themselves

but not for defense of their country.

18 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

“keep and bear Arms” is established by the Second

Amendment’s calling it a “right” (singular) rather than

“rights” (plural). See post, at 16. There is nothing to this.

State constitutions of the founding period routinely

grouped multiple (related) guarantees under a singular

“right,” and the First Amendment protects the “right

[singular] of the people peaceably to assemble, and to

petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” See,

e.g., Pa. Declaration of Rights §§IX, XII, XVI, in 5 Thorpe

3083–3084; Ohio Const., Arts. VIII, §§11, 19 (1802), in id.,

at 2910–2911.14 And even if “keep and bear Arms” were a

unitary phrase, we find no evidence that it bore a military

meaning. Although the phrase was not at all common

(which would be unusual for a term of art), we have found

instances of its use with a clearly nonmilitary connotation.

In a 1780 debate in the House of Lords, for example, Lord

Richmond described an order to disarm private citizens

(not militia members) as “a violation of the constitutional

right of Protestant subjects to keep and bear arms for

their own defense.” 49 The London Magazine or Gentle­

man’s Monthly Intelligencer 467 (1780). In response,

another member of Parliament referred to “the right of

bearing arms for personal defence,” making clear that no

special military meaning for “keep and bear arms” was

intended in the discussion. Id., at 467–468.15

——————

14 Faced with this clear historical usage, JUSTICE STEVENS resorts to

the bizarre argument that because the word “to” is not included before

“bear” (whereas it is included before “petition” in the First Amend­

ment), the unitary meaning of “to keep and bear” is established. Post,

at 16, n. 13. We have never heard of the proposition that omitting

repetition of the “to” causes two verbs with different meanings to

become one. A promise “to support and to defend the Constitution of

the United States” is not a whit different from a promise “to support

and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

15 Cf. 3 Geo., 34, §3, in 7 Eng. Stat. at Large 126 (1748) (“That the

Prohibition contained . . . in this Act, of having, keeping, bearing, or

wearing any Arms or Warlike Weapons . . . shall not extend . . . to any

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 19

Opinion of the Court

c. Meaning of the Operative Clause. Putting all of

these textual elements together, we find that they guaran­

tee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in

case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed

by the historical background of the Second Amendment.

We look to this because it has always been widely under­

stood that the Second Amendment, like the First and

Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The

very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes

the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it

“shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v.

Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right

granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner

dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The

Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed

. . . .”16

Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution,

the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II succeeded in

using select militias loyal to them to suppress political

dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents. See J.

Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms 31–53 (1994) (hereinaf­

ter Malcolm); L. Schwoerer, The Declaration of Rights,

1689, p. 76 (1981). Under the auspices of the 1671 Game

Act, for example, the Catholic James II had ordered gen­

eral disarmaments of regions home to his Protestant

enemies. See Malcolm 103–106. These experiences

caused Englishmen to be extremely wary of concentrated

military forces run by the state and to be jealous of their

arms. They accordingly obtained an assurance from Wil­

liam and Mary, in the Declaration of Right (which was

codified as the English Bill of Rights), that Protestants

——————

Officers or their Assistants, employed in the Execution of Justice . . .”).

16 Contrary to JUSTICE STEVENS’ wholly unsupported assertion, post,

at 1, 17, there was no pre-existing right in English law “to use weapons

for certain military purposes” or to use arms in an organized militia.

20 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

would never be disarmed: “That the subjects which are

Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to

their conditions and as allowed by law.” 1 W. & M., c. 2,

§7, in 3 Eng. Stat. at Large 441 (1689). This right has

long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second

Amendment. See E. Dumbauld, The Bill of Rights and

What It Means Today 51 (1957); W. Rawle, A View of the

Constitution of the United States of America 122 (1825)

(hereinafter Rawle). It was clearly an individual right,

having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia.

To be sure, it was an individual right not available to the

whole population, given that it was restricted to Protes­

tants, and like all written English rights it was held only

against the Crown, not Parliament. See Schwoerer, To

Hold and Bear Arms: The English Perspective, in Bogus

207, 218; but see 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Consti­

tution of the United States §1858 (1833) (hereinafter

Story) (contending that the “right to bear arms” is a “limi­

tatio[n] upon the power of parliament” as well). But it was

secured to them as individuals, according to “libertarian

political principles,” not as members of a fighting force.

Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights, at 283; see also id., at

78; G. Jellinek, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and

of Citizens 49, and n. 7 (1901) (reprinted 1979).

By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had

become fundamental for English subjects. See Malcolm

122–134. Blackstone, whose works, we have said, “consti­

tuted the preeminent authority on English law for the

founding generation,” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 715

(1999), cited the arms provision of the Bill of Rights as one

of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. See 1 Black-

stone 136, 139–140 (1765). His description of it cannot

possibly be thought to tie it to militia or military service.

It was, he said, “the natural right of resistance and self-

preservation,” id., at 139, and “the right of having and

using arms for self-preservation and defence,” id., at 140;

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 21

Opinion of the Court

see also 3 id., at 2–4 (1768). Other contemporary authori­

ties concurred. See G. Sharp, Tracts, Concerning the

Ancient and Only True Legal Means of National Defence,

by a Free Militia 17–18, 27 (3d ed. 1782); 2 J. de Lolme,

The Rise and Progress of the English Constitution 886–

887 (1784) (A. Stephens ed. 1838); W. Blizard, Desultory

Reflections on Police 59–60 (1785). Thus, the right se­

cured in 1689 as a result of the Stuarts’ abuses was by the

time of the founding understood to be an individual right

protecting against both public and private violence.

And, of course, what the Stuarts had tried to do to their

political enemies, George III had tried to do to the colo­

nists. In the tumultuous decades of the 1760’s and 1770’s,

the Crown began to disarm the inhabitants of the most

rebellious areas. That provoked polemical reactions by

Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep

arms. A New York article of April 1769 said that “[i]t is a

natural right which the people have reserved to them­

selves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for

their own defence.” A Journal of the Times: Mar. 17, New

York Journal, Supp. 1, Apr. 13, 1769, in Boston Under

Military Rule 79 (O. Dickerson ed. 1936); see also, e.g.,

Shippen, Boston Gazette, Jan. 30, 1769, in 1 The Writings

of Samuel Adams 299 (H. Cushing ed. 1968). They under­

stood the right to enable individuals to defend themselves.

As the most important early American edition of Black­

stone’s Commentaries (by the law professor and former

Antifederalist St. George Tucker) made clear in the notes

to the description of the arms right, Americans understood

the “right of self-preservation” as permitting a citizen to

“repe[l] force by force” when “the intervention of society in

his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.” 1 Black­

stone’s Commentaries 145–146, n. 42 (1803) (hereinafter

Tucker’s Blackstone). See also W. Duer, Outlines of the

Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States 31–32

(1833).

22 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

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, see, e.g., United States v.

Williams, 553 U. S. ___ (2008). Thus, we do not read the

Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry

arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read

the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to

speak for any purpose. Before turning to limitations upon

the individual right, however, we must determine whether

the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment comports

with our interpretation of the operative clause.

2. Prefatory Clause.

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 (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 com­

panies, 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 Feder­

alist 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 mili­

tia, stating that “[m]ilitias are the state- and congression­

ally-regulated military forces described in the Militia

Clauses (art. I, §8, cls. 15–16).” Brief for Petitioners 12.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 23

Opinion of the Court

Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assump­

tion that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and

the Second Amendment, we believe that petitioners iden­

tify 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 Con­

gress did in the first militia Act, which specified that “each

and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the re­

spective 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,

24 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

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 com­

munity.” 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 coun­

try’ ” 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 in­

stances of “state” in the Constitution are typically accom­

panied 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 Alexan­

der 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

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 25

Opinion of the Court

better able to resist tyranny.

3. Relationship between Prefatory Clause and

Operative Clause

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with

an operative clause that creates an individual right to

keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the

history that the founding generation knew and that we

have described above. That history showed that the way

tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-

bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by

taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or

standing army to suppress political opponents. This is

what had occurred in England that prompted codification

of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.

The debate with respect to the right to keep and bear

arms, as with other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, was

not over whether it was desirable (all agreed that it was)

but over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitu­

tion. During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that

the federal government would disarm the people in order

to impose rule through a standing army or select militia

was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric. See, e.g., Letters

from The Federal Farmer III (Oct. 10, 1787), in 2 The

Complete Anti-Federalist 234, 242 (H. Storing ed. 1981).

John Smilie, for example, worried not only that Congress’s

“command of the militia” could be used to create a “select

militia,” or to have “no militia at all,” but also, as a sepa­

rate concern, that “[w]hen a select militia is formed; the

people in general may be disarmed.” 2 Documentary

History of the Ratification of the Constitution 508–509 (M.

Jensen ed. 1976) (hereinafter Documentary Hist.). Feder­

alists responded that because Congress was given no

power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep

and bear arms, such a force could never oppress the peo­

ple. See, e.g., A Pennsylvanian III (Feb. 20, 1788), in The

26 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

Origin of the Second Amendment 275, 276 (D. Young ed.,

2d ed. 2001) (hereinafter Young); White, To the Citizens of

Virginia, Feb. 22, 1788, in id., at 280, 281; A Citizen of

America, (Oct. 10, 1787) in id., at 38, 40; Remarks on the

Amendments to the federal Constitution, Nov. 7, 1788, in

id., at 556. It was understood across the political spec­

trum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen

militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive

military force if the constitutional order broke down.

It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amend­

ment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which

the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the mili­

tia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving

the militia was the only reason Americans valued the

ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more

important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat

that the new Federal Government would destroy the

citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason

that right—unlike some other English rights—was codi­

fied in a written Constitution. JUSTICE BREYER’s asser­

tion that individual self-defense is merely a “subsidiary

interest” of the right to keep and bear arms, see post, at

36, is profoundly mistaken. He bases that assertion solely

upon the prologue—but that can only show that self-

defense had little to do with the right’s codification; it was

the central component of the right itself.

Besides ignoring the historical reality that the Second

Amendment was not intended to lay down a “novel prin­

cipl[e]” but rather codified a right “inherited from our

English ancestors,” Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275,

281 (1897), petitioners’ interpretation does not even

achieve the narrower purpose that prompted codification

of the right. If, as they believe, the Second Amendment

right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as

a member of an organized militia, see Brief for Petitition­

ers 8—if, that is, the organized militia is the sole institu­

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 27

Opinion of the Court

tional beneficiary of the Second Amendment’s guarantee—

it does not assure the existence of a “citizens’ militia” as a

safeguard against tyranny. For Congress retains plenary

authority to organize the militia, which must include the

authority to say who will belong to the organized force.17

That is why the first Militia Act’s requirement that only

whites enroll caused States to amend their militia laws to

exclude free blacks. See Siegel, The Federal Government’s

Power to Enact Color-Conscious Laws, 92 Nw. U. L. Rev.

477, 521–525 (1998). Thus, if petitioners are correct, the

Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to use a gun in

an organization from which Congress has plenary author­

ity to exclude them. It guarantees a select militia of the

sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people’s

militia that was the concern of the founding generation.

B

Our interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-

bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and

immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment.

Four States adopted analogues to the Federal Second

Amendment in the period between independence and the

——————

17 Article I, §8, cl. 16 of the Constitution gives Congress the power

“[t]o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia,

and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the

Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively,

the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the

Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

It could not be clearer that Congress’s “organizing” power, unlike its

“governing” power, can be invoked even for that part of the militia not

“employed in the Service of the United States.” JUSTICE STEVENS

provides no support whatever for his contrary view, see post, at 19 n.

20. Both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists read the provision as it

was written, to permit the creation of a “select” militia. See The Feder­

alist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961); Centinel, Revived, No.

XXIX, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, Sept. 9, 1789, in Young

711, 712.

28 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

ratification of the Bill of Rights. Two of them—

Pennsylvania and Vermont—clearly adopted individual

rights unconnected to militia service. Pennsylvania’s

Declaration of Rights of 1776 said: “That the people have a

right to bear arms for the defence of themselves, and the

state . . . .” §XIII, in 5 Thorpe 3082, 3083 (emphasis

added). In 1777, Vermont adopted the identical provision,

except for inconsequential differences in punctuation and

capitalization. See Vt. Const., ch. 1, §15, in 6 id., at 3741.

North Carolina also codified a right to bear arms in

1776: “That the people have a right to bear arms, for the

defence of the State . . . .” Declaration of Rights §XVII, in

id., at 2787, 2788. This could plausibly be read to support

only a right to bear arms in a militia—but that is a pecu­

liar way to make the point in a constitution that elsewhere

repeatedly mentions the militia explicitly. See §§14, 18,

35, in 5 id., 2789, 2791, 2793. Many colonial statutes

required individual arms-bearing for public-safety rea-

sons—such as the 1770 Georgia law that “for the security

and defence of this province from internal dangers and

insurrections” required those men who qualified for militia

duty individually “to carry fire arms” “to places of public

worship.” 19 Colonial Records of the State of Georgia 137–

139 (A. Candler ed. 1911 (pt. 2)) (emphasis added). That

broad public-safety understanding was the connotation

given to the North Carolina right by that State’s Supreme

Court in 1843. See State v. Huntly, 3 Ired. 418, 422–423.

The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution presented another

variation on the theme: “The people have a right to keep

and to bear arms for the common defence. . . .” Pt. First,

Art. XVII, in 3 Thorpe 1888, 1892. Once again, if one

gives narrow meaning to the phrase “common defence”

this can be thought to limit the right to the bearing of

arms in a state-organized military force. But once again

the State’s highest court thought otherwise. Writing for

the court in an 1825 libel case, Chief Justice Parker wrote:

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 29

Opinion of the Court

“The liberty of the press was to be unrestrained, but he

who used it was to be responsible in cases of its abuse; like

the right to keep fire arms, which does not protect him

who uses them for annoyance or destruction.” Common-

wealth v. Blanding, 20 Mass. 304, 313–314. The analogy

makes no sense if firearms could not be used for any indi­

vidual purpose at all. See also Kates, Handgun Prohibi­

tion and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment,

82 Mich. L. Rev. 204, 244 (1983) (19th-century courts

never read “common defence” to limit the use of weapons

to militia service).

We therefore believe that the most likely reading of all

four of these pre-Second Amendment state constitutional

provisions is that they secured an individual right to bear

arms for defensive purposes. Other States did not include

rights to bear arms in their pre-1789 constitutions—

although in Virginia a Second Amendment analogue was

proposed (unsuccessfully) by Thomas Jefferson. (It read:

“No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms

[within his own lands or tenements].”18 1 The Papers of

Thomas Jefferson 344 (J. Boyd ed. 1950)).

Between 1789 and 1820, nine States adopted Second

Amendment analogues. Four of them—Kentucky, Ohio,

Indiana, and Missouri—referred to the right of the people

to “bear arms in defence of themselves and the State.” See

n. 8, supra. Another three States—Mississippi, Connecti­

cut, and Alabama—used the even more individualistic

phrasing that each citizen has the “right to bear arms in

defence of himself and the State.” See ibid. Finally, two

States—Tennessee and Maine—used the “common de­

fence” language of Massachusetts. See Tenn. Const., Art.

——————

18 JUSTICE STEVENS says that the drafters of the Virginia Declaration

of Rights rejected this proposal and adopted “instead” a provision

written by George Mason stressing the importance of the militia. See

post, at 24, and n. 24. There is no evidence that the drafters regarded

the Mason proposal as a substitute for the Jefferson proposal.

30 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

XI, §26 (1796), in 6 Thorpe 3414, 3424; Me. Const., Art. I,

§16 (1819), in 3 id., at 1646, 1648. That of the nine state

constitutional protections for the right to bear arms en­

acted immediately after 1789 at least seven unequivocally

protected an individual citizen’s right to self-defense is

strong evidence that that is how the founding generation

conceived of the right. And with one possible exception

that we discuss in Part II–D–2, 19th-century courts and

commentators interpreted these state constitutional provi­

sions to protect an individual right to use arms for self-

defense. See n. 9, supra; Simpson v. State, 5 Yer. 356, 360

(Tenn. 1833).

The historical narrative that petitioners must endorse

would thus treat the Federal Second Amendment as an

odd outlier, protecting a right unknown in state constitu­

tions or at English common law, based on little more than

an overreading of the prefatory clause.

C

JUSTICE STEVENS relies on the drafting history of the

Second Amendment—the various proposals in the state

conventions and the debates in Congress. It is dubious to

rely on such history to interpret a text that was widely

understood to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to

fashion a new one. But even assuming that this legisla­

tive history is relevant, JUSTICE STEVENS flatly misreads

the historical record.

It is true, as JUSTICE STEVENS says, that there was

concern that the Federal Government would abolish the

institution of the state militia. See post, at 20. That

concern found expression, however, not in the various

Second Amendment precursors proposed in the State

conventions, but in separate structural provisions that

would have given the States concurrent and seemingly

nonpre-emptible authority to organize, discipline, and arm

the militia when the Federal Government failed to do so.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 31

Opinion of the Court

See Veit 17, 20 (Virginia proposal); 4 J. Eliot, The Debates

in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the

Federal Constitution 244, 245 (2d ed. 1836) (reprinted

1941) (North Carolina proposal); see also 2 Documentary

Hist. 624 (Pennsylvania minority’s proposal). The Second

Amendment precursors, by contrast, referred to the indi­

vidual English right already codified in two (and probably

four) State constitutions. The Federalist-dominated first

Congress chose to reject virtually all major structural

revisions favored by the Antifederalists, including the

proposed militia amendments. Rather, it adopted primar­

ily the popular and uncontroversial (though, in the Feder­

alists’ view, unnecessary) individual-rights amendments.

The Second Amendment right, protecting only individuals’

liberty to keep and carry arms, did nothing to assuage

Antifederalists’ concerns about federal control of the mili­

tia. See, e.g., Centinel, Revived, No. XXIX, Philadelphia

Independent Gazetteer, Sept. 9, 1789, in Young 711, 712.

JUSTICE STEVENS thinks it significant that the Virginia,

New York, and North Carolina Second Amendment pro­

posals were “embedded . . . within a group of principles

that are distinctly military in meaning,” such as state­

ments about the danger of standing armies. Post, at 22.

But so was the highly influential minority proposal in

Pennsylvania, yet that proposal, with its reference to

hunting, plainly referred to an individual right. See 2

Documentary Hist. 624. Other than that erroneous point,

JUSTICE STEVENS has brought forward absolutely no

evidence that those proposals conferred only a right to

carry arms in a militia. By contrast, New Hampshire’s

proposal, the Pennsylvania minority’s proposal, and Sam­

uel Adams’ proposal in Massachusetts unequivocally

referred to individual rights, as did two state constitu­

tional provisions at the time. See Veit 16, 17 (New Hamp­

shire proposal); 6 Documentary Hist. 1452, 1453 (J.

Kaminski & G. Saladino eds. 2000) (Samuel Adams’ pro­

32 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

posal). JUSTICE STEVENS’ view thus relies on the proposi­

tion, unsupported by any evidence, that different people of

the founding period had vastly different conceptions of the

right to keep and bear arms. That simply does not com­

port with our longstanding view that the Bill of Rights

codified venerable, widely understood liberties.

D

We now address how the Second Amendment was inter­

preted from immediately after its ratification through the

end of the 19th century. Before proceeding, however, we

take issue with JUSTICE STEVENS’ equating of these

sources with postenactment legislative history, a compari­

son that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of a

court’s interpretive task. See post, at 27, n. 28. “Legisla­

tive history,” of course, refers to the pre-enactment state­

ments of those who drafted or voted for a law; it is consid­

ered persuasive by some, not because they reflect the

general understanding of the disputed terms, but because

the legislators who heard or read those statements pre­

sumably voted with that understanding. Ibid. “Pos­

tenactment legislative history,” ibid., a deprecatory con­

tradiction in terms, refers to statements of those who

drafted or voted for the law that are made after its enact­

ment and hence could have had no effect on the congres­

sional vote. It most certainly does not refer to the exami­

nation of a variety of legal and other sources to determine

the public understanding of a legal text in the period after

its enactment or ratification. That sort of inquiry is a

critical tool of constitutional interpretation. As we will

show, virtually all interpreters of the Second Amendment

in the century after its enactment interpreted the amend­

ment as we do.

1. Post-ratification Commentary

Three important founding-era legal scholars interpreted

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 33

Opinion of the Court

the Second Amendment in published writings. All three

understood it to protect an individual right unconnected

with militia service.

St. George Tucker’s version of Blackstone’s Commentar­

ies, as we explained above, conceived of the Blackstonian

arms right as necessary for self-defense. He equated that

right, absent the religious and class-based restrictions,

with the Second Amendment. See 2 Tucker’s Blackstone

143. In Note D, entitled, “View of the Constitution of the

United States,” Tucker elaborated on the Second Amend­

ment: “This may be considered as the true palladium of

liberty . . . . The right to self-defence is the first law of

nature: in most governments it has been the study of

rulers to confine the right within the narrowest limits

possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the

right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any

colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not

already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” 1 id.,

at App. 300 (ellipsis in original). He believed that the

English game laws had abridged the right by prohibiting

“keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of

game.” Ibid; see also 2 id., at 143, and nn. 40 and 41. He

later grouped the right with some of the individual rights

included in the First Amendment and said that if “a law

be passed by congress, prohibiting” any of those rights, it

would “be the province of the judiciary to pronounce

whether any such act were constitutional, or not; and if

not, to acquit the accused . . . .” 1 id., at App. 357. It is

unlikely that Tucker was referring to a person’s being

“accused” of violating a law making it a crime to bear arms

in a state militia.19

——————

19 JUSTICE STEVENS quotes some of Tucker’s unpublished notes, which

he claims show that Tucker had ambiguous views about the Second

Amendment. See post, at 31, and n. 32. But it is clear from the notes

that Tucker located the power of States to arm their militias in the

Tenth Amendment, and that he cited the Second Amendment for the

34 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

In 1825, William Rawle, a prominent lawyer who had

been a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly that ratified

the Bill of Rights, published an influential treatise, which

analyzed the Second Amendment as follows:

“The first [principle] is a declaration that a well

regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free

state; a proposition from which few will dissent. . . .

“The corollary, from the first position is, that the

right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be

infringed.

“The prohibition is general. No clause in the consti­

tution could by any rule of construction be conceived

to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such

a flagitious attempt could only be made under some

general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any

blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should at­

tempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a re­

straint on both.” Rawle 121–122.20

Like Tucker, Rawle regarded the English game laws as

violating the right codified in the Second Amendment. See

id., 122–123. Rawle clearly differentiated between the

people’s right to bear arms and their service in a militia:

“In a people permitted and accustomed to bear arms, we

have the rudiments of a militia, which properly consists of

armed citizens, divided into military bands, and instructed

——————

proposition that such armament could not run afoul of any power of the

federal government (since the amendment prohibits Congress from

ordering disarmament). Nothing in the passage implies that the

Second Amendment pertains only to the carrying of arms in the organ­

ized militia.

20 Rawle, writing before our decision in Barron ex rel. Tiernan v.

Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833), believed that the Second

Amendment could be applied against the States. Such a belief would of

course be nonsensical on petitioners’ view that it protected only a right

to possess and carry arms when conscripted by the State itself into

militia service.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 35

Opinion of the Court

at least in part, in the use of arms for the purposes of

war.” Id., at 140. Rawle further said that the Second

Amendment right ought not “be abused to the disturbance

of the public peace,” such as by assembling with other

armed individuals “for an unlawful purpose”—statements

that make no sense if the right does not extend to any

individual purpose.

Joseph Story published his famous Commentaries on

the Constitution of the United States in 1833. JUSTICE

STEVENS suggests that “[t]here is not so much as a whis­

per” in Story’s explanation of the Second Amendment that

favors the individual-rights view. Post, at 34. That is

wrong. Story explained that the English Bill of Rights had

also included a “right to bear arms,” a right that, as we

have discussed, had nothing to do with militia service. 3

Story §1858. He then equated the English right with the

Second Amendment:

“§1891. A similar provision [to the Second Amend­

ment] in favour of protestants (for to them it is con­

fined) is to be found in the bill of rights of 1688, it be­

ing declared, ‘that the subjects, which are protestants,

may have arms for their defence suitable to their con­

dition, and as allowed by law.’ But under various pre­

tences the effect of this provision has been greatly

narrowed; and it is at present in England more nomi­

nal than real, as a defensive privilege.” (Footnotes

omitted.)

This comparison to the Declaration of Right would not

make sense if the Second Amendment right was the right

to use a gun in a militia, which was plainly not what the

English right protected. As the Tennessee Supreme Court

recognized 38 years after Story wrote his Commentaries,

“[t]he passage from Story, shows clearly that this right

was intended . . . and was guaranteed to, and to be exer­

cised and enjoyed by the citizen as such, and not by him as

36 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

a soldier, or in defense solely of his political rights.” An-

drews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 183 (1871). Story’s Commen­

taries also cite as support Tucker and Rawle, both of

whom clearly viewed the right as unconnected to militia

service. See 3 Story §1890, n. 2; §1891, n. 3. In addition,

in a shorter 1840 work Story wrote: “One of the ordinary

modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes with­

out resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it

an offence to keep arms, and by substituting a regular

army in the stead of a resort to the militia.” A Familiar

Exposition of the Constitution of the United States §450

(reprinted in 1986).

Antislavery advocates routinely invoked the right to

bear arms for self-defense. Joel Tiffany, for example,

citing Blackstone’s description of the right, wrote that “the

right to keep and bear arms, also implies the right to use

them if necessary in self defence; without this right to use

the guaranty would have hardly been worth the paper it

consumed.” A Treatise on the Unconstitutionality of

American Slavery 117–118 (1849); see also L. Spooner, The

Unconstitutionality of Slavery 116 (1845) (right enables

“personal defence”). In his famous Senate speech about

the 1856 “Bleeding Kansas” conflict, Charles Sumner

proclaimed:

“The rifle has ever been the companion of the pioneer

and, under God, his tutelary protector against the red

man and the beast of the forest. Never was this effi­

cient weapon more needed in just self-defence, than

now in Kansas, and at least one article in our Na­

tional Constitution must be blotted out, before the

complete right to it can in any way be impeached.

And yet such is the madness of the hour, that, in defi­

ance of the solemn guarantee, embodied in the

Amendments to the Constitution, that ‘the right of the

people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,’

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 37

Opinion of the Court

the people of Kansas have been arraigned for keeping

and bearing them, and the Senator from South Caro­

lina has had the face to say openly, on this floor, that

they should be disarmed—of course, that the fanatics

of Slavery, his allies and constituents, may meet no

impediment.” The Crime Against Kansas, May 19–20,

1856, in American Speeches: Political Oratory from

the Revolution to the Civil War 553, 606–607 (2006).

We have found only one early 19th-century commenta­

tor who clearly conditioned the right to keep and bear

arms upon service in the militia—and he recognized that

the prevailing view was to the contrary. “The provision of

the constitution, declaring the right of the people to keep

and bear arms, &c. was probably intended to apply to the

right of the people to bear arms for such [militia-related]

purposes only, and not to prevent congress or the legisla­

tures of the different states from enacting laws to prevent

the citizens from always going armed. A different con­

struction however has been given to it.” B. Oliver, The

Rights of an American Citizen 177 (1832).

2. Pre-Civil War Case Law

The 19th-century cases that interpreted the Second

Amendment universally support an individual right un­

connected to militia service. In Houston v. Moore, 5

Wheat. 1, 24 (1820), this Court held that States have

concurrent power over the militia, at least where not pre­

empted by Congress. Agreeing in dissent that States

could “organize, discipline, and arm” the militia in the

absence of conflicting federal regulation, Justice Story said

that the Second Amendment “may not, perhaps, be

thought to have any important bearing on this point. If it

have, it confirms and illustrates, rather than impugns the

reasoning already suggested.” Id., at 51–53. Of course, if

the Amendment simply “protect[ed] the right of the people

of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated

38 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

militia,” post, at 1 (STEVENS, J., dissenting), it would have

enormous and obvious bearing on the point. But the Court

and Story derived the States’ power over the militia from

the nonexclusive nature of federal power, not from the

Second Amendment, whose preamble merely “confirms

and illustrates” the importance of the militia. Even

clearer was Justice Baldwin. In the famous fugitive-slave

case of Johnson v. Tompkins, 13 F. Cas. 840, 850, 852 (CC

Pa. 1833), Baldwin, sitting as a circuit judge, cited both

the Second Amendment and the Pennsylvania analogue

for his conclusion that a citizen has “a right to carry arms

in defence of his property or person, and to use them, if

either were assailed with such force, numbers or violence

as made it necessary for the protection or safety of either.”

Many early 19th-century state cases indicated that the

Second Amendment right to bear arms was an individual

right unconnected to militia service, though subject to

certain restrictions. A Virginia case in 1824 holding that

the Constitution did not extend to free blacks explained

that “numerous restrictions imposed on [blacks] in our

Statute Book, many of which are inconsistent with the

letter and spirit of the Constitution, both of this State and

of the United States as respects the free whites, demon­

strate, that, here, those instruments have not been consid­

ered to extend equally to both classes of our population.

We will only instance the restriction upon the migration of

free blacks into this State, and upon their right to bear

arms.” Aldridge v. Commonwealth, 2 Va. Cas. 447, 449

(Gen. Ct.). The claim was obviously not that blacks were

prevented from carrying guns in the militia.21 See also

——————

21 JUSTICE STEVENS suggests that this is not obvious because free

blacks in Virginia had been required to muster without arms. See post,

at 28, n. 29 (citing Siegel, The Federal Government’s Power to Enact

Color-Conscious Laws, 92 Nw. U. L. Rev. 477, 497 (1998)). But that

could not have been the type of law referred to in Aldridge, because

that practice had stopped 30 years earlier when blacks were excluded

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Opinion of the Court

Waters v. State, 1 Gill 302, 309 (Md. 1843) (because free

blacks were treated as a “dangerous population,” “laws

have been passed to prevent their migration into this

State; to make it unlawful for them to bear arms; to guard

even their religious assemblages with peculiar watchful­

ness”). An 1829 decision by the Supreme Court of Michi­

gan said: “The constitution of the United States also

grants to the citizen the right to keep and bear arms. But

the grant of this privilege cannot be construed into the

right in him who keeps a gun to destroy his neighbor. No

rights are intended to be granted by the constitution for

an unlawful or unjustifiable purpose.” United States v.

Sheldon, in 5 Transactions of the Supreme Court of the

Territory of Michigan 337, 346 (W. Blume ed. 1940) (here­

inafter Blume). It is not possible to read this as discussing

anything other than an individual right unconnected to

militia service. If it did have to do with militia service, the

limitation upon it would not be any “unlawful or unjustifi­

able purpose,” but any nonmilitary purpose whatsoever.

In Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846), the Georgia

Supreme Court construed the Second Amendment as

protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore

struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly. Its opinion

perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause of

the Second Amendment furthers the purpose announced

——————

entirely from the militia by the First Militia Act. See Siegel, supra, at

498, n. 120. JUSTICE STEVENS further suggests that laws barring blacks

from militia service could have been said to violate the “right to bear

arms.” But under JUSTICE STEVENS’ reading of the Second Amendment

(we think), the protected right is the right to carry arms to the extent

one is enrolled in the militia, not the right to be in the militia. Perhaps

JUSTICE STEVENS really does adopt the full-blown idiomatic meaning of

“bear arms,” in which case every man and woman in this country has a

right “to be a soldier” or even “to wage war.” In any case, it is clear to

us that Aldridge’s allusion to the existing Virginia “restriction” upon

the right of free blacks “to bear arms” could only have referred to “laws

prohibiting blacks from keeping weapons,” Siegel, supra, at 497–498.

40 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

in the prefatory clause, in continuity with the English

right:

“The right of the whole people, old and young, men,

women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and

bear arms of every description, and not such merely as

are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, cur­

tailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and

all this for the important end to be attained: the rear­

ing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vi­

tally necessary to the security of a free State. Our

opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repug­

nant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes

this right, originally belonging to our forefathers,

trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked

sons and successors, re-established by the revolution

of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colo­

nists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our

own Magna Charta!”

Likewise, in State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann. 489, 490

(1850), the Louisiana Supreme Court held that citizens

had a right to carry arms openly: “This is the right guar­

anteed by the Constitution of the United States, and

which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble

defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country,

without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly

assassinations.”

Those who believe that the Second Amendment pre­

serves only a militia-centered right place great reliance on

the Tennessee Supreme Court’s 1840 decision in Aymette

v. State, 21 Tenn. 154. The case does not stand for that

broad proposition; in fact, the case does not mention the

word “militia” at all, except in its quoting of the Second

Amendment. Aymette held that the state constitutional

guarantee of the right to “bear” arms did not prohibit the

banning of concealed weapons. The opinion first recog­

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 41

Opinion of the Court

nized that both the state right and the federal right were

descendents of the 1689 English right, but (erroneously,

and contrary to virtually all other authorities) read that

right to refer only to “protect[ion of] the public liberty” and

“keep[ing] in awe those in power,” id., at 158. The court

then adopted a sort of middle position, whereby citizens

were permitted to carry arms openly, unconnected with

any service in a formal militia, but were given the right to

use them only for the military purpose of banding together

to oppose tyranny. This odd reading of the right is, to be

sure, not the one we adopt—but it is not petitioners’ read­

ing either. More importantly, seven years earlier the

Tennessee Supreme Court had treated the state constitu­

tional provision as conferring a right “of all the free citi­

zens of the State to keep and bear arms for their defence,”

Simpson, 5 Yer., at 360; and 21 years later the court held

that the “keep” portion of the state constitutional right

included the right to personal self-defense: “[T]he right to

keep arms involves, necessarily, the right to use such

arms for all the ordinary purposes, and in all the ordinary

modes usual in the country, and to which arms are

adapted, limited by the duties of a good citizen in times of

peace.” Andrews, 50 Tenn., at 178; see also ibid. (equating

state provision with Second Amendment).

3. Post-Civil War Legislation.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was an outpour­

ing of discussion of the Second Amendment in Congress

and in public discourse, as people debated whether and

how to secure constitutional rights for newly free slaves.

See generally S. Halbrook, Freedmen, the Fourteenth

Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866–1876

(1998) (hereinafter Halbrook); Brief for Institute for Jus­

tice as Amicus Curiae. Since those discussions took place

75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment,

they do not provide as much insight into its original mean­

42 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

ing as earlier sources. Yet those born and educated in the

early 19th century faced a widespread effort to limit arms

ownership by a large number of citizens; their understand­

ing of the origins and continuing significance of the

Amendment is instructive.

Blacks were routinely disarmed by Southern States

after the Civil War. Those who opposed these injustices

frequently stated that they infringed blacks’ constitutional

right to keep and bear arms. Needless to say, the claim

was not that blacks were being prohibited from carrying

arms in an organized state militia. A Report of the Com­

mission of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866 stated plainly:

“[T]he civil law [of Kentucky] prohibits the colored man

from bearing arms. . . . Their arms are taken from them

by the civil authorities. . . . Thus, the right of the people to

keep and bear arms as provided in the Constitution is

infringed.” H. R. Exec. Doc. No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.,

233, 236. A joint congressional Report decried:

“in some parts of [South Carolina], armed parties are,

without proper authority, engaged in seizing all fire­

arms found in the hands of the freemen. Such con­

duct is in clear and direct violation of their personal

rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United

States, which declares that ‘the right of the people to

keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The

freedmen of South Carolina have shown by their

peaceful and orderly conduct that they can safely be

trusted with fire-arms, and they need them to kill

game for subsistence, and to protect their crops from

destruction by birds and animals.” Joint Comm. on

Reconstruction, H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st

Sess., pt. 2, p. 229 (1866) (Proposed Circular of Briga­

dier General R. Saxton).

The view expressed in these statements was widely

reported and was apparently widely held. For example,

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 43

Opinion of the Court

an editorial in The Loyal Georgian (Augusta) on February

3, 1866, assured blacks that “[a]ll men, without distinction

of color, have the right to keep and bear arms to defend

their homes, families or themselves.” Halbrook 19.

Congress enacted the Freedmen’s Bureau Act on July

16, 1866. Section 14 stated:

“[T]he right . . . to have full and equal benefit of all

laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty,

personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and

disposition of estate, real and personal, including the

constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to

and enjoyed by all the citizens . . . without respect to

race or color, or previous condition of slavery. . . . ” 14

Stat. 176–177.

The understanding that the Second Amendment gave

freed blacks the right to keep and bear arms was reflected

in congressional discussion of the bill, with even an oppo­

nent of it saying that the founding generation “were for

every man bearing his arms about him and keeping them

in his house, his castle, for his own defense.” Cong. Globe,

39th Cong., 1st Sess., 362, 371 (1866) (Sen. Davis).

Similar discussion attended the passage of the Civil

Rights Act of 1871 and the Fourteenth Amendment. For

example, Representative Butler said of the Act: “Section

eight is intended to enforce the well-known constitutional

provision guaranteeing the right of the citizen to ‘keep and

bear arms,’ and provides that whoever shall take away, by

force or violence, or by threats and intimidation, the arms

and weapons which any person may have for his defense,

shall be deemed guilty of larceny of the same.” H. R. Rep.

No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 7–8 (1871). With respect

to the proposed Amendment, Senator Pomeroy described

as one of the three “indispensable” “safeguards of liberty

. . . under the Constitution” a man’s “right to bear arms for

the defense of himself and family and his homestead.”

44 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1182 (1866). Repre­

sentative Nye thought the Fourteenth Amendment unnec­

essary because “[a]s citizens of the United States [blacks]

have equal right to protection, and to keep and bear arms

for self-defense.” Id., at 1073 (1866).

It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War

Congress that the Second Amendment protected an indi­

vidual right to use arms for self-defense.

4. Post-Civil War Commentators.

Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read

interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individ­

ual right unconnected with militia service. The most

famous was the judge and professor Thomas Cooley, who

wrote a massively popular 1868 Treatise on Constitutional

Limitations. Concerning the Second Amendment it said:

“Among the other defences to personal liberty

should be mentioned the right of the people to keep

and bear arms. . . . The alternative to a standing army

is ‘a well-regulated militia,’ but this cannot exist

unless the people are trained to bearing arms. How

far it is in the power of the legislature to regulate this

right, we shall not undertake to say, as happily there

has been very little occasion to discuss that subject by

the courts.” Id., at 350.

That Cooley understood the right not as connected to

militia service, but as securing the militia by ensuring a

populace familiar with arms, is made even clearer in his

1880 work, General Principles of Constitutional Law. The

Second Amendment, he said, “was adopted with some

modification and enlargement from the English Bill of

Rights of 1688, where it stood as a protest against arbi­

trary action of the overturned dynasty in disarming the

people.” Id., at 270. In a section entitled “The Right in

General,” he continued:

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 45

Opinion of the Court

“It might be supposed from the phraseology of this

provision that the right to keep and bear arms was

only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an

interpretation not warranted by the intent. The mili­

tia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those

persons who, under the law, are liable to the perform­

ance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled

for service when called upon. But the law may make

provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to per­

form military duty, or of a small number only, or it

may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if

the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of

this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the ac­

tion or neglect to act of the government it was meant

to hold in check. The meaning of the provision un­

doubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia

must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear

arms; and they need no permission or regulation of

law for the purpose. But this enables government to

have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies

something more than the mere keeping; it implies the

learning to handle and use them in a way that makes

those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in

other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary

discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of

public order.” Id., at 271.

All other post-Civil War 19th-century sources we have

found concurred with Cooley. One example from each

decade will convey the general flavor:

“[The purpose of the Second Amendment is] to secure

a well-armed militia. . . . But a militia would be use­

less unless the citizens were enabled to exercise them­

selves in the use of warlike weapons. To preserve this

privilege, and to secure to the people the ability to op­

pose themselves in military force against the usurpa­

46 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

tions of government, as well as against enemies from

without, that government is forbidden by any law or

proceeding to invade or destroy the right to keep and

bear arms. . . . The clause is analogous to the one se­

curing the freedom of speech and of the press. Free­

dom, not license, is secured; the fair use, not the libel­

lous abuse, is protected.” J. Pomeroy, An Introduction

to the Constitutional Law of the United States 152–

153 (1868) (hereinafter Pomeroy).

“As the Constitution of the United States, and the

constitutions of several of the states, in terms more or

less comprehensive, declare the right of the people to

keep and bear arms, it has been a subject of grave dis­

cussion, in some of the state courts, whether a statute

prohibiting persons, when not on a journey, or as

travellers, from wearing or carrying concealed weap-

ons, be constitutional. There has been a great differ­

ence of opinion on the question.” 2 J. Kent, Commen­

taries on American Law *340, n. 2 (O. Holmes ed.,

12th ed. 1873) (hereinafter Kent).

“Some general knowledge of firearms is important to

the public welfare; because it would be impossible, in

case of war, to organize promptly an efficient force of

volunteers unless the people had some familiarity

with weapons of war. The Constitution secures the

right of the people to keep and bear arms. No doubt, a

citizen who keeps a gun or pistol under judicious pre­

cautions, practices in safe places the use of it, and in

due time teaches his sons to do the same, exercises his

individual right. No doubt, a person whose residence

or duties involve peculiar peril may keep a pistol for

prudent self-defence.” B. Abbott, Judge and Jury: A

Popular Explanation of the Leading Topics in the Law

of the Land 333 (1880) (hereinafter Abbott).

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 47

Opinion of the Court

“The right to bear arms has always been the dis­

tinctive privilege of freemen. Aside from any neces­

sity of self-protection to the person, it represents

among all nations power coupled with the exercise of a

certain jurisdiction. . . . [I]t was not necessary that the

right to bear arms should be granted in the Constitu­

tion, for it had always existed.” J. Ordronaux, Consti­

tutional Legislation in the United States 241–242

(1891).

E

We now ask whether any of our precedents forecloses

the conclusions we have reached about the meaning of the

Second Amendment.

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, in the course

of vacating the convictions of members of a white mob for

depriving blacks of their right to keep and bear arms, held

that the Second Amendment does not by its own force

apply to anyone other than the Federal Government. The

opinion explained that the right “is not a right granted by

the Constitution [or] in any manner dependent upon that

instrument for its existence. The second amendment . . .

means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Con­

gress.” 92 U. S., at 553. States, we said, were free to

restrict or protect the right under their police powers. The

limited discussion of the Second Amendment in Cruik-

shank supports, if anything, the individual-rights inter­

pretation. There was no claim in Cruikshank that the

victims had been deprived of their right to carry arms in a

militia; indeed, the Governor had disbanded the local

militia unit the year before the mob’s attack, see C. Lane,

The Day Freedom Died 62 (2008). We described the right

protected by the Second Amendment as “ ‘bearing arms for

a lawful purpose’ ”22 and said that “the people [must] look

——————

22 JUSTICE STEVENS’ accusation that this is “not accurate,” post, at 39,

48 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

for their protection against any violation by their fellow-

citizens of the rights it recognizes” to the States’ police

power. 92 U. S., at 553. That discussion makes little

sense if it is only a right to bear arms in a state militia.23

Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252 (1886), held that the

right to keep and bear arms was not violated by a law that

forbade “bodies of men to associate together as military

organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in cities and

towns unless authorized by law.” Id., at 264–265. This

does not refute the individual-rights interpretation of the

Amendment; no one supporting that interpretation has

contended that States may not ban such groups. JUSTICE

STEVENS presses Presser into service to support his view

that the right to bear arms is limited to service in the

militia by joining Presser’s brief discussion of the Second

Amendment with a later portion of the opinion making the

seemingly relevant (to the Second Amendment) point that

the plaintiff was not a member of the state militia. Unfor­

tunately for JUSTICE STEVENS’ argument, that later por­

tion deals with the Fourteenth Amendment; it was the

Fourteenth Amendment to which the plaintiff’s nonmem­

bership in the militia was relevant. Thus, JUSTICE

STEVENS’ statement that Presser “suggested that. . . noth­

ing in the Constitution protected the use of arms outside

the context of a militia,” post, at 40, is simply wrong.

——————

is wrong. It is true it was the indictment that described the right as

“bearing arms for a lawful purpose.” But, in explicit reference to the

right described in the indictment, the Court stated that “The second

amendment declares that it [i.e., the right of bearing arms for a lawful

purpose] shall not be infringed.” 92 U. S., at 553.

23 With respect to Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation,

a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also

said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did

not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by

our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252,

265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed

that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 49

Opinion of the Court

Presser said nothing about the Second Amendment’s

meaning or scope, beyond the fact that it does not prevent

the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.

JUSTICE STEVENS places overwhelming reliance upon

this Court’s decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S.

174 (1939). “[H]undreds of judges,” we are told, “have

relied on the view of the amendment we endorsed there,”

post, at 2, and “[e]ven if the textual and historical argu­

ments on both sides of the issue were evenly balanced,

respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors

on this Court, and for the rule of law itself . . . would

prevent most jurists from endorsing such a dramatic

upheaval in the law,” post, at 4. And what is, according to

JUSTICE STEVENS, the holding of Miller that demands

such obeisance? That the Second Amendment “protects

the right to keep and bear arms for certain military pur­

poses, but that it does not curtail the legislature’s power to

regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons.”

Post, at 2.

Nothing so clearly demonstrates the weakness of

JUSTICE STEVENS’ case. Miller did not hold that and

cannot possibly be read to have held that. The judgment

in the case upheld against a Second Amendment challenge

two men’s federal indictment for transporting an unregis­

tered short-barreled shotgun in interstate commerce, in

violation of the National Firearms Act, 48 Stat. 1236. It is

entirely clear that the Court’s basis for saying that the

Second Amendment did not apply was not that the defen­

dants were “bear[ing] arms” not “for . . . military purposes”

but for “nonmilitary use,” post, at 2. Rather, it was that

the type of weapon at issue was not eligible for Second

Amendment protection: “In the absence of any evidence

tending to show that the possession or use of a [short­

barreled shotgun] at this time has some reasonable rela­

tionship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regu­

lated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment

50 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instru-

ment.” 307 U. S., at 178 (emphasis added). “Certainly,”

the Court continued, “it is not within judicial notice that

this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equip­

ment or that its use could contribute to the common de­

fense.” Ibid. Beyond that, the opinion provided no expla­

nation of the content of the right.

This holding is not only consistent with, but positively

suggests, that the Second Amendment confers an individ­

ual right to keep and bear arms (though only arms that

“have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or

efficiency of a well regulated militia”). Had the Court

believed that the Second Amendment protects only those

serving in the militia, it would have been odd to examine

the character of the weapon rather than simply note that

the two crooks were not militiamen. JUSTICE STEVENS can

say again and again that Miller did “not turn on the dif­

ference between muskets and sawed-off shotguns, it

turned, rather, on the basic difference between the mili­

tary and nonmilitary use and possession of guns,” post, at

42–43, but the words of the opinion prove otherwise. The

most JUSTICE STEVENS can plausibly claim for Miller is

that it declined to decide the nature of the Second

Amendment right, despite the Solicitor General’s argu­

ment (made in the alternative) that the right was collec­

tive, see Brief for United States, O. T. 1938, No. 696,

pp. 4–5. Miller stands only for the proposition that the

Second Amendment right, whatever its nature, extends

only to certain types of weapons.

It is particularly wrongheaded to read Miller for more

than what it said, because the case did not even purport to

be a thorough examination of the Second Amendment.

JUSTICE STEVENS claims, post, at 42, that the opinion

reached its conclusion “[a]fter reviewing many of the same

sources that are discussed at greater length by the Court

today.” Not many, which was not entirely the Court’s

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 51

Opinion of the Court

fault. The defendants made no appearance in the case,

neither filing a brief nor appearing at oral argument; the

Court heard from no one but the Government (reason

enough, one would think, not to make that case the begin­

ning and the end of this Court’s consideration of the Sec­

ond Amendment). See Frye, The Peculiar Story of United

States v. Miller, 3 N. Y. U. J. L. & Liberty 48, 65–68

(2008). The Government’s brief spent two pages discuss­

ing English legal sources, concluding “that at least the

carrying of weapons without lawful occasion or excuse was

always a crime” and that (because of the class-based re­

strictions and the prohibition on terrorizing people with

dangerous or unusual weapons) “the early English law did

not guarantee an unrestricted right to bear arms.” Brief

for United States, O. T. 1938, No. 696, at 9–11. It then

went on to rely primarily on the discussion of the English

right to bear arms in Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn. 154, for

the proposition that the only uses of arms protected by the

Second Amendment are those that relate to the militia,

not self-defense. See Brief for United States, O. T. 1938,

No. 696, at 12–18. The final section of the brief recognized

that “some courts have said that the right to bear arms

includes the right of the individual to have them for the

protection of his person and property,” and launched an

alternative argument that “weapons which are commonly

used by criminals,” such as sawed-off shotguns, are not

protected. See id., at 18–21. The Government’s Miller

brief thus provided scant discussion of the history of the

Second Amendment—and the Court was presented with

no counterdiscussion. As for the text of the Court’s opin­

ion itself, that discusses none of the history of the Second

Amendment. It assumes from the prologue that the

Amendment was designed to preserve the militia, 307

U. S., at 178 (which we do not dispute), and then reviews

some historical materials dealing with the nature of the

militia, and in particular with the nature of the arms their

52 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

members were expected to possess, id., at 178–182. Not a

word (not a word) about the history of the Second Amend­

ment. This is the mighty rock upon which the dissent

rests its case.24

We may as well consider at this point (for we will have

to consider eventually) what types of weapons Miller

permits. Read in isolation, Miller’s phrase “part of ordi­

nary military equipment” could mean that only those

weapons useful in warfare are protected. That would be a

startling reading of the opinion, since it would mean that

the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on machineguns

(not challenged in Miller) might be unconstitutional,

machineguns being useful in warfare in 1939. We think

that Miller’s “ordinary military equipment” language must

be read in tandem with what comes after: “[O]rdinarily

when called for [militia] service [able-bodied] men were

expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves

and of the kind in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at

179. The traditional militia was formed from a pool of

men bringing arms “in common use at the time” for lawful

purposes like self-defense. “In the colonial and revolu­

tionary war era, [small-arms] weapons used by militiamen

and weapons used in defense of person and home were one

and the same.” State v. Kessler, 289 Ore. 359, 368, 614

P. 2d 94, 98 (1980) (citing G. Neumann, Swords and

Blades of the American Revolution 6–15, 252–254 (1973)).

Indeed, that is precisely the way in which the Second

——————

24 As for the “hundreds of judges,” post, at 2, who have relied on the

view of the Second Amendment JUSTICE STEVENS claims we endorsed in

Miller: If so, they overread Miller. And their erroneous reliance upon

an uncontested and virtually unreasoned case cannot nullify the

reliance of millions of Americans (as our historical analysis has shown)

upon the true meaning of the right to keep and bear arms. In any

event, it should not be thought that the cases decided by these judges

would necessarily have come out differently under a proper interpreta­

tion of the right.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 53

Opinion of the Court

Amendment’s operative clause furthers the purpose an­

nounced in its preface. We therefore read Miller to say

only that the Second Amendment does not protect those

weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens

for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.

That accords with the historical understanding of the

scope of the right, see Part III, infra.25

We conclude that nothing in our precedents forecloses

our adoption of the original understanding of the Second

Amendment. It should be unsurprising that such a sig­

nificant matter has been for so long judicially unresolved.

For most of our history, the Bill of Rights was not thought

applicable to the States, and the Federal Government did

not significantly regulate the possession of firearms by

law-abiding citizens. Other provisions of the Bill of Rights

have similarly remained unilluminated for lengthy peri­

ods. This Court first held a law to violate the First

Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech in 1931,

almost 150 years after the Amendment was ratified, see

Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S. 697 (1931), and

it was not until after World War II that we held a law

——————

25 Miller was briefly mentioned in our decision in Lewis v. United

States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980), an appeal from a conviction for being a felon

in possession of a firearm. The challenge was based on the contention

that the prior felony conviction had been unconstitutional. No Second

Amendment claim was raised or briefed by any party. In the course of

rejecting the asserted challenge, the Court commented gratuitously, in

a footnote, that “[t]hese legislative restrictions on the use of firearms

are neither based upon constitutionally suspect criteria, nor do they

trench upon any constitutionally protected liberties. See United States

v. Miller . . . (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 65–66,

n. 8. The footnote then cites several Court of Appeals cases to the same

effect. It is inconceivable that we would rest our interpretation of the

basic meaning of any guarantee of the Bill of Rights upon such a

footnoted dictum in a case where the point was not at issue and was not

argued.

54 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

invalid under the Establishment Clause, see Illinois ex rel.

McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, Cham-

paign Cty., 333 U. S. 203 (1948). Even a question as basic

as the scope of proscribable libel was not addressed by this

Court until 1964, nearly two centuries after the founding.

See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964).

It is demonstrably not true that, as JUSTICE STEVENS

claims, post, at 41–42, “for most of our history, the invalid­

ity of Second-Amendment-based objections to firearms

regulations has been well settled and uncontroversial.”

For most of our history the question did not present itself.

III

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second

Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through

the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts rou­

tinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and

carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever

and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume

346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott 333. For exam­

ple, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the

question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed

weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or

state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann.,

at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2

Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n.

11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an

exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the

Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be

taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the

possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or

laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places

such as schools and government buildings, or laws impos­

ing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 55

Opinion of the Court

arms.26

We also recognize another important limitation on the

right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have

explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those

“in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think

that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradi­

tion of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual

weapons.” See 4 Blackstone 148–149 (1769); 3 B. Wilson,

Works of the Honourable James Wilson 79 (1804); J.

Dunlap, The New-York Justice 8 (1815); C. Humphreys, A

Compendium of the Common Law in Force in Kentucky

482 (1822); 1 W. Russell, A Treatise on Crimes and Indict­

able Misdemeanors 271–272 (1831); H. Stephen, Summary

of the Criminal Law 48 (1840); E. Lewis, An Abridgment

of the Criminal Law of the United States 64 (1847); F.

Wharton, A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United

States 726 (1852). See also State v. Langford, 10 N. C.

381, 383–384 (1824); O’Neill v. State, 16 Ala. 65, 67 (1849);

English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 476 (1871); State v. Lanier,

71 N. C. 288, 289 (1874).

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful

in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be

banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely

detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said,

the conception of the militia at the time of the Second

Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens

capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of

lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia

duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as

effective as militias in the 18th century, would require

sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at

large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small

arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and

——————

26 We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only

as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.

56 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

tanks. But the fact that modern developments have lim­

ited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the

protected right cannot change our interpretation of the

right.

IV

We turn finally to the law at issue here. As we have

said, the law totally bans handgun possession in the home.

It also requires that any lawful firearm in the home be

disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, ren­

dering it inoperable.

As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate,

the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the

Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a

prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelm­

ingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose.

The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the

need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.

Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have ap­

plied to enumerated constitutional rights,27 banning from

——————

27 JUSTICE BREYER correctly notes that this law, like almost all laws,

would pass rational-basis scrutiny. Post, at 8. But rational-basis

scrutiny is a mode of analysis we have used when evaluating laws

under constitutional commands that are themselves prohibitions on

irrational laws. See, e.g., Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture, 553

U. S. ___, ___ (2008) (slip op., at 9–10). In those cases, “rational basis”

is not just the standard of scrutiny, but the very substance of the

constitutional guarantee. Obviously, the same test could not be used to

evaluate the extent to which a legislature may regulate a specific,

enumerated right, be it the freedom of speech, the guarantee against

double jeopardy, the right to counsel, or the right to keep and bear

arms. See United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U. S. 144, 152,

n. 4 (1938) (“There may be narrower scope for operation of the pre­

sumption of constitutionality [i.e., narrower than that provided by

rational-basis review] when legislation appears on its face to be within

a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of the first ten

amendments. . .”). If all that was required to overcome the right to

keep and bear arms was a rational basis, the Second Amendment would

be redundant with the separate constitutional prohibitions on irra­

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 57

Opinion of the Court

the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to

‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,”

478 F. 3d, at 400, would fail constitutional muster.

Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to

the severe restriction of the District’s handgun ban. And

some of those few have been struck down. In Nunn v.

State, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a prohibi­

tion on carrying pistols openly (even though it upheld a

prohibition on carrying concealed weapons). See 1 Ga., at

251. In Andrews v. State, the Tennessee Supreme Court

likewise held that a statute that forbade openly carrying a

pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or

place, or circumstances,” 50 Tenn., at 187, violated the

state constitutional provision (which the court equated

with the Second Amendment). That was so even though

the statute did not restrict the carrying of long guns. Ibid.

See also State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616–617 (1840) (“A

statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts

to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be

so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose

of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional”).

It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is per­

missible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the

possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed. It

is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American

people have considered the handgun to be the quintessen­

tial self-defense weapon. There are many reasons that a

citizen may prefer a handgun for home defense: It is easier

to store in a location that is readily accessible in an emer­

gency; it cannot easily be redirected or wrestled away by

an attacker; it is easier to use for those without the upper-

body strength to lift and aim a long gun; it can be pointed

at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the

police. Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popu­

——————

tional laws, and would have no effect.

58 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

lar weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the

home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.

We must also address the District’s requirement (as

applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the

home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This

makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core

lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitu­

tional. The District argues that we should interpret this

element of the statute to contain an exception for self-

defense. See Brief for Petitioners 56–57. But we think

that is precluded by the unequivocal text, and by the

presence of certain other enumerated exceptions: “Except

for law enforcement personnel . . . , each registrant shall

keep any firearm in his possession unloaded and disas­

sembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device unless

such firearm is kept at his place of business, or while

being used for lawful recreational purposes within the

District of Columbia.” D. C. Code §7–2507.02. The non­

existence of a self-defense exception is also suggested by

the D. C. Court of Appeals’ statement that the statute

forbids residents to use firearms to stop intruders, see

McIntosh v. Washington, 395 A. 2d 744, 755–756 (1978).28

Apart from his challenge to the handgun ban and the

trigger-lock requirement respondent asked the District

Court to enjoin petitioners from enforcing the separate

licensing requirement “in such a manner as to forbid the

carrying of a firearm within one’s home or possessed land

without a license.” App. 59a. The Court of Appeals did

not invalidate the licensing requirement, but held only

——————

28 McIntosh upheld the law against a claim that it violated the Equal

Protection Clause by arbitrarily distinguishing between residences and

businesses. See 395 A. 2d, at 755. One of the rational bases listed for

that distinction was the legislative finding “that for each intruder

stopped by a firearm there are four gun-related accidents within the

home.” Ibid. That tradeoff would not bear mention if the statute did

not prevent stopping intruders by firearms.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 59

Opinion of the Court

that the District “may not prevent [a handgun] from being

moved throughout one’s house.” 478 F. 3d, at 400. It then

ordered the District Court to enter summary judgment

“consistent with [respondent’s] prayer for relief.” Id., at

401. Before this Court petitioners have stated that “if the

handgun ban is struck down and respondent registers a

handgun, he could obtain a license, assuming he is not

otherwise disqualified,” by which they apparently mean if

he is not a felon and is not insane. Brief for Petitioners

58. Respondent conceded at oral argument that he does

not “have a problem with . . . licensing” and that the Dis­

trict’s law is permissible so long as it is “not enforced in an

arbitrary and capricious manner.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 74–75.

We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license

will satisfy respondent’s prayer for relief and do not ad­

dress the licensing requirement.

JUSTICE BREYER has devoted most of his separate dis­

sent to the handgun ban. He says that, even assuming the

Second Amendment is a personal guarantee of the right to

bear arms, the District’s prohibition is valid. He first tries

to establish this by founding-era historical precedent,

pointing to various restrictive laws in the colonial period.

These demonstrate, in his view, that the District’s law

“imposes a burden upon gun owners that seems propor­

tionately no greater than restrictions in existence at the

time the Second Amendment was adopted.” Post, at 2. Of

the laws he cites, only one offers even marginal support

for his assertion. A 1783 Massachusetts law forbade the

residents of Boston to “take into” or “receive into” “any

Dwelling House, Stable, Barn, Out-house, Ware-house,

Store, Shop or other Building” loaded firearms, and per­

mitted the seizure of any loaded firearms that “shall be

found” there. Act of Mar. 1, 1783, ch. 13, 1783 Mass. Acts

p. 218. That statute’s text and its prologue, which makes

clear that the purpose of the prohibition was to eliminate

the danger to firefighters posed by the “depositing of

60 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

loaded Arms” in buildings, give reason to doubt that colo­

nial Boston authorities would have enforced that general

prohibition against someone who temporarily loaded a

firearm to confront an intruder (despite the law’s applica­

tion in that case). In any case, we would not stake our

interpretation of the Second Amendment upon a single

law, in effect in a single city, that contradicts the over­

whelming weight of other evidence regarding the right to

keep and bear arms for defense of the home. The other

laws JUSTICE BREYER cites are gunpowder-storage laws

that he concedes did not clearly prohibit loaded weapons,

but required only that excess gunpowder be kept in a

special container or on the top floor of the home. Post, at

6–7. Nothing about those fire-safety laws undermines our

analysis; they do not remotely burden the right of self-

defense as much as an absolute ban on handguns. Nor,

correspondingly, does our analysis suggest the invalidity

of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent

accidents.

JUSTICE BREYER points to other founding-era laws that

he says “restricted the firing of guns within the city limits

to at least some degree” in Boston, Philadelphia and New

York. Post, at 4 (citing Churchill, Gun Regulation, the

Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early Amer­

ica, 25 Law & Hist. Rev. 139, 162 (2007)). Those laws

provide no support for the severe restriction in the present

case. The New York law levied a fine of 20 shillings on

anyone who fired a gun in certain places (including

houses) on New Year’s Eve and the first two days of Janu­

ary, and was aimed at preventing the “great Damages . . .

frequently done on [those days] by persons going House to

House, with Guns and other Firearms and being often

intoxicated with Liquor.” 5 Colonial Laws of New York

244–246 (1894). It is inconceivable that this law would

have been enforced against a person exercising his right to

self-defense on New Year’s Day against such drunken

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 61

Opinion of the Court

hooligans. The Pennsylvania law to which JUSTICE

BREYER refers levied a fine of 5 shillings on one who fired

a gun or set off fireworks in Philadelphia without first

obtaining a license from the governor. See Act of Aug. 26,

1721, §4, in 3 Stat. at Large 253–254. Given Justice Wil­

son’s explanation that the right to self-defense with arms

was protected by the Pennsylvania Constitution, it is

unlikely that this law (which in any event amounted to at

most a licensing regime) would have been enforced against

a person who used firearms for self-defense. JUSTICE

BREYER cites a Rhode Island law that simply levied a 5­

shilling fine on those who fired guns in streets and taverns,

a law obviously inapplicable to this case. See An Act for

preventing Mischief being done in the town of Newport, or

in any other town in this Government, 1731, Rhode Island

Session Laws. Finally, JUSTICE BREYER points to a Mas­

sachusetts law similar to the Pennsylvania law, prohibit­

ing “discharg[ing] any Gun or Pistol charged with Shot or

Ball in the Town of Boston.” Act of May 28, 1746, ch. X,

Acts and Laws of Mass. Bay 208. It is again implausible

that this would have been enforced against a citizen acting

in self-defense, particularly given its preambulatory refer­

ence to “the indiscreet firing of Guns.” Ibid. (preamble)

(emphasis added).

A broader point about the laws that JUSTICE BREYER

cites: All of them punished the discharge (or loading) of

guns with a small fine and forfeiture of the weapon (or in a

few cases a very brief stay in the local jail), not with sig­

nificant criminal penalties.29 They are akin to modern

penalties for minor public-safety infractions like speeding

——————

29 The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania described the amount of five

shillings in a contract matter in 1792 as “nominal consideration.”

Morris’s Lessee v. Smith, 4 Dall. 119, 120 (Pa. 1792). Many of the laws

cited punished violation with fine in a similar amount; the 1783 Massa­

chusetts gunpowder-storage law carried a somewhat larger fine of £10

(200 shillings) and forfeiture of the weapon.

62 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

or jaywalking. And although such public-safety laws may

not contain exceptions for self-defense, it is inconceivable

that the threat of a jaywalking ticket would deter someone

from disregarding a “Do Not Walk” sign in order to flee an

attacker, or that the Government would enforce those laws

under such circumstances. Likewise, we do not think that

a law imposing a 5-shilling fine and forfeiture of the gun

would have prevented a person in the founding era from

using a gun to protect himself or his family from violence,

or that if he did so the law would be enforced against him.

The District law, by contrast, far from imposing a minor

fine, threatens citizens with a year in prison (five years for

a second violation) for even obtaining a gun in the first

place. See D. C. Code §7–2507.06.

JUSTICE BREYER moves on to make a broad jurispruden­

tial point: He criticizes us for declining to establish a level

of scrutiny for evaluating Second Amendment restrictions.

He proposes, explicitly at least, none of the traditionally

expressed levels (strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny,

rational basis), but rather a judge-empowering “interest­

balancing inquiry” that “asks whether the statute burdens

a protected interest in a way or to an extent that is out of

proportion to the statute’s salutary effects upon other

important governmental interests.” Post, at 10. After an

exhaustive discussion of the arguments for and against

gun control, JUSTICE BREYER arrives at his interest-

balanced answer: because handgun violence is a problem,

because the law is limited to an urban area, and because

there were somewhat similar restrictions in the founding

period (a false proposition that we have already dis­

cussed), the interest-balancing inquiry results in the

constitutionality of the handgun ban. QED.

We know of no other enumerated constitutional right

whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding

“interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of

the right takes out of the hands of government—even the

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 63

Opinion of the Court

Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a

case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insist­

ing upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future

judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional

guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with

the scope they were understood to have when the people

adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes)

even future judges think that scope too broad. We would

not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibi­

tion of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See

National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43

(1977) (per curiam). The First Amendment contains the

freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified,

which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclo­

sure of state secrets, but not for the expression of ex­

tremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second

Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very

product of an interest-balancing by the people—which

JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew. And

whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely

elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding,

responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and

home.

JUSTICE BREYER chides us for leaving so many applica­

tions of the right to keep and bear arms in doubt, and for

not providing extensive historical justification for those

regulations of the right that we describe as permissible.

See post, at 42–43. But since this case represents this

Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amend­

ment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field,

any more than Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145

(1879), our first in-depth Free Exercise Clause case, left

that area in a state of utter certainty. And there will be

time enough to expound upon the historical justifications

for the exceptions we have mentioned if and when those

exceptions come before us.

64 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Opinion of the Court

In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun

possession in the home violates the Second Amendment,

as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful fire­

arm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate

self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified

from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the Dis­

trict must permit him to register his handgun and must

issue him a license to carry it in the home.

* * *

We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this

country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the

many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun

ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the

District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that

problem, including some measures regulating handguns,

see supra, at 54–55, and n. 26. But the enshrinement of

constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy

choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibi­

tion of handguns held and used for self-defense in the

home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amend­

ment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is

the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces

provide personal security, and where gun violence is a

serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is

not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to

pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1

STEVENS, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

_________________

No. 07–290

_________________

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ET AL., PETITIONERS v.

DICK ANTHONY HELLER

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF

APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

[June 26, 2008]

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER, JUSTICE

GINSBURG, and JUSTICE BREYER join, dissenting.

The question presented by this case is not whether the

Second Amendment protects a “collective right” or an

“individual right.” Surely it protects a right that can be

enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second

Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us

anything about the scope of that right.

Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit

crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military

duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect

the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that

it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain

military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to

possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunt­

ing and personal self-defense is the question presented by

this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our

decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939),

provide a clear answer to that question.

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the

right of the people of each of the several States to main­

tain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to con­

cerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution

that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias

and create a national standing army posed an intolerable

2 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

STEVENS, J., dissenting

threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither

the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced

by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limit­

ing any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian

uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that

the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the

common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act,

the first major federal firearms law.1 Sustaining an in­

dictment under the Act, this Court held that, “[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 rela­

tionship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regu­

lated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment

guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instru­

ment.” Miller, 307 U. S., at 178. The view of the Amend­

ment we took in Miller—that it protects the right to keep

and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it

does not curtail the Legislature’s power to regulate the

nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons—is both the

most natural reading of the Amendment’s text and the

interpretation most faithful to the history of its adoption.

Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have

relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;2

——————

1 There was some limited congressional activity earlier: A 10% federal

excise tax on firearms was passed as part of the Revenue Act of 1918,

40 Stat. 1057, and in 1927 a statute was enacted prohibiting the

shipment of handguns, revolvers, and other concealable weapons

through the United States mails. Ch. 75, 44 Stat. 1059–1060 (hereinaf­

ter 1927 Act).

2 Until the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Emerson, 270

F. 3d 203 (2001), every Court of Appeals to consider the question had

understood Miller to hold that the Second Amendment does not protect

the right to possess and use guns for purely private, civilian purposes.

See, e.g., United States v. Haney, 264 F. 3d 1161, 1164–1166 (CA10

2001); United States v. Napier, 233 F. 3d 394, 402–404 (CA6 2000);

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3

STEVENS, J., dissenting

we ourselves affirmed it in 1980. See Lewis v. United

States, 445 U. S. 55, 65–66, n. 8 (1980).3 No new evidence

has surfaced since 1980 supporting the view that the

Amendment was intended to curtail the power of Congress

to regulate civilian use or misuse of weapons. Indeed, a

review of the drafting history of the Amendment demon­

strates that its Framers rejected proposals that would

have broadened its coverage to include such uses.

The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify

any new evidence supporting the view that the Amend­

ment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regu­

late civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such

evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and

——————

Gillespie v. Indianapolis, 185 F. 3d 693, 710–711 (CA7 1999); United

States v. Scanio, No. 97–1584, 1998 WL 802060, *2 (CA2, Nov. 12,

1998) (unpublished opinion); United States v. Wright, 117 F. 3d 1265,

1271–1274 (CA11 1997); United States v. Rybar, 103 F. 3d 273, 285–286

(CA3 1996); Hickman v. Block, 81 F. 3d 98, 100–103 (CA9 1996); United

States v. Hale, 978 F. 2d 1016, 1018–1020 (CA8 1992); Thomas v. City

Council of Portland, 730 F. 2d 41, 42 (CA1 1984) (per curiam); United

States v. Johnson, 497 F. 2d 548, 550 (CA4 1974) (per curiam); United

States v. Johnson, 441 F. 2d 1134, 1136 (CA5 1971); see also Sandidge

v. United States, 520 A. 2d 1057, 1058–1059 (DC App. 1987). And a

number of courts have remained firm in their prior positions, even after

considering Emerson. See, e.g., United States v. Lippman, 369 F. 3d

1039, 1043–1045 (CA8 2004); United States v. Parker, 362 F. 3d 1279,

1282–1284 (CA10 2004); United States v. Jackubowski, 63 Fed. Appx.

959, 961 (CA7 2003) (unpublished opinion); Silveira v. Lockyer, 312

F. 3d 1052, 1060–1066 (CA9 2002); United States v. Milheron, 231

F. Supp. 2d 376, 378 (Me. 2002); Bach v. Pataki, 289 F. Supp. 2d 217,

224–226 (NDNY 2003); United States v. Smith, 56 M. J. 711, 716 (C. A.

Armed Forces 2001).

3 Our discussion in Lewis was brief but significant. Upholding a con­

viction for receipt of a firearm by a felon, we wrote: “These legislative

restrictions on the use of firearms are neither based upon constitution­

ally suspect criteria, nor do they entrench upon any constitutionally

protected liberties. See United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, 178

(1939) (the Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a

firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preser­

vation or efficiency of a well regulated militia’).” 445 U. S., at 65, n. 8.

4 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

STEVENS, J., dissenting

unpersuasive reading of the Amendment’s text; signifi­

cantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of

Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions;

postenactment commentary that was available to the

Court when it decided Miller; and, ultimately, a feeble

attempt to distinguish Miller that places more emphasis

on the Court’s decisional process than on the reasoning in

the opinion itself.

Even if the textual and historical arguments on both

sides of the issue were evenly balanced, respect for the

well-settled views of all of our predecessors on this Court,

and for the rule of law itself, see Mitchell v. W. T. Grant

Co., 416 U. S. 600, 636 (1974) (Stewart, J., dissenting),

would prevent most jurists from endorsing such a dra­

matic upheaval in the law.4 As Justice Cardozo observed

years ago, the “labor of judges would be increased almost

to the breaking point if every past decision could be re­

opened in every case, and one could not lay one’s own

——————

4 See Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265, 266 (1986) (“[Stare de-

cisis] permits society to presume that bedrock principles are founded in

the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals, and thereby

contributes to the integrity of our constitutional system of government,

both in appearance and in fact. While stare decisis is not an inexorable

command, the careful observer will discern that any detours from the

straight path of stare decisis in our past have occurred for articulable

reasons, and only when the Court has felt obliged ‘to bring its opinions

into agreement with experience and with facts newly ascertained.’

Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 412 (1932) (Brandeis,

J., dissenting)”); Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., 157 U. S. 429,

652 (1895) (White, J., dissenting) (“The fundamental conception of a

judicial body is that of one hedged about by precedents which are

binding on the court without regard to the personality of its members.

Break down this belief in judicial continuity and let it be felt that on

great constitutional questions this Court is to depart from the settled

conclusions of its predecessors, and to determine them all according to

the mere opinion of those who temporarily fill its bench, and our

Constitution will, in my judgment, be bereft of value and become a most

dangerous instrument to the rights and liberties of the people”).

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 5

STEVENS, J., dissenting

course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses

laid by others who had gone before him.” The Nature of

the Judicial Process 149 (1921).

In this dissent I shall first explain why our decision in

Miller was faithful to the text of the Second Amendment

and the purposes revealed in its drafting history. I shall

then comment on the postratification history of the

Amendment, which makes abundantly clear that the

Amendment should not be interpreted as limiting the

authority of Congress to regulate the use or possession of

firearms for purely civilian purposes.

I

The text of the Second Amendment is brief. It 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.”

Three portions of that text merit special focus: the in­

troductory language defining the Amendment’s purpose,

the class of persons encompassed within its reach, and the

unitary nature of the right that it protects.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of

a free State”

The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three

important points. It identifies the preservation of the

militia as the Amendment’s purpose; it explains that the

militia is necessary to the security of a free State; and it

recognizes that the militia must be “well regulated.” In all

three respects it is comparable to provisions in several

State Declarations of Rights that were adopted roughly

contemporaneously with the Declaration of Independence.5

——————

5 The Virginia Declaration of Rights ¶13 (1776), provided: “That a

well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to

arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State; that

Standing Armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to

6 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

STEVENS, J., dissenting

Those state provisions highlight the importance members

of the founding generation attached to the maintenance of

state militias; they also underscore the profound fear

shared by many in that era of the dangers posed by stand­

ing armies.6 While the need for state militias has not been

——————

liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict

subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” 1 B. Schwartz, The

Bill of Rights 235 (1971) (hereinafter Schwartz).

Maryland’s Declaration of Rights, Arts. XXV–XXVII (1776), provided:

“That a well-regulated militia is the proper and natural defence of a

free government”; “That standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and

ought not to be raised or kept up, without consent of the Legislature”;

“That in all cases, and at all times, the military ought to be under strict

subordination to and control of the civil power.” 1 Schwartz 282.

Delaware’s Declaration of Rights, §§18–20 (1776), provided: “That a

well regulated militia is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free

government”; “That standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and

ought not to be raised or kept up without the consent of the Legisla­

ture”; “That in all cases and at all times the military ought to be under

strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.” 1 Schwartz

278.

Finally, New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights, Arts. XXIV–XXVI (1783),

read: “A well regulated militia is the proper, natural, and sure defence

of a state”; “Standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to

be raised or kept up without consent of the legislature”; “In all cases,

and at all times, the military ought to be under strict subordination to,

and governed by the civil power.” 1 Schwartz 378. It elsewhere pro­

vided: “No person who is conscientiously scrupulous about the lawful­

ness of bearing arms, shall be compelled thereto, provided he will pay

an equivalent.” Id., at 377 (Art. XIII).

6 The language of the Amendment’s preamble also closely tracks the

language of a number of contemporaneous state militia statutes, many

of which began with nearly identical statements. Georgia’s 1778 militia

statute, for example, began, “[w]hereas a well ordered and disciplined

Militia, is essentially necessary, to the Safety, peace and prosperity, of

this State.” Act of Nov. 15, 1778, 19 Colonial Records of the State of

Georgia 103 (Candler ed. 1911 (pt. 2)). North Carolina’s 1777 militia

statute started with this language: “Whereas a well regulated Militia is

absolutely necessary for the defending and securing the Liberties of a

free State.” N. C. Sess. Laws ch. 1, §I, p. 1. And Connecticut’s 1782

“Acts and Laws Regulating the Militia” began, “Whereas the Defence

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 7

STEVENS, J., dissenting

a matter of significant public interest for almost two cen­

turies, that fact should not obscure the contemporary

concerns that animated the Framers.

The parallels between the Second Amendment and

these state declarations, and the Second Amendment’s

omission of any statement of purpose related to the right

to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense, is

especially striking in light of the fact that the Declarations

of Rights of Pennsylvania and Vermont did expressly

protect such civilian uses at the time. Article XIII of

Pennsylvania’s 1776 Declaration of Rights announced that

“the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of

themselves and the state,” 1 Schwartz 266 (emphasis

added); §43 of the Declaration assured that “the inhabi­

tants of this state shall have the liberty to fowl and hunt

in seasonable times on the lands they hold, and on all

other lands therein not inclosed,” id.,

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