The Second Amendment: The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

What it plainly means

The people have a right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms, and that right "shall not be infringed." The opening clause, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," states a purpose. It does not shrink the right to members of an organized military unit; the right is given to "the people," the same words used in the First and Fourth Amendments.

History and the Founders' intent

The Founders had just won independence with citizen soldiers who brought their own muskets. The British march on Lexington and Concord in April 1775 was an attempt to seize colonial arms and powder. To the founding generation, "the militia" meant ordinary able-bodied citizens. At the Virginia ratifying convention in June 1788, George Mason asked, "who are the militia?" and answered: "They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." (The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution dates this speech June 16, 1788; Elliot's Debates, vol. 3, p. 425, prints it with the June 14 proceedings.)

Madison, in The Federalist No. 46, contrasted America with Europe's kingdoms, noting "the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." An armed people was a final check on a federal standing army, which the Anti-Federalists feared.

Key Supreme Court cases

• United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939): reversed the dismissal of a National Firearms Act indictment for transporting an unregistered short-barreled shotgun; with no evidence that such a gun had "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia," the Court would not say the Amendment protected it.
• District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008): an individual right; D.C.'s handgun ban and its rule that guns at home be kept inoperable were struck down.
• McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010): the right applies to states and cities through the Fourteenth Amendment.
• New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022): the right extends to carrying a handgun in public for self-defense; gun laws must fit "the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
• United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024): upheld 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), holding that "an individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed" consistent with the Second Amendment.

What it means for you today

Law-abiding adults have a constitutional right to own guns, keep them ready for self-defense at home, and carry them in public, subject to regulations with a real historical analogue. State constitutions add their own guarantees: Tennessee's Article I, Section 26 protects the right "for their common defense" and lets the legislature regulate the wearing of arms to prevent crime; Colorado's Article II, Section 13 protects the right to defend "home, person and property" but says it does not justify carrying concealed weapons, which Colorado regulates by permit. Gun laws differ by state; check your state's current statutes before you carry.