Origins and Purpose of the U.S. Second Amendment
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that protects a right to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. The American Bar Association has noted that there is more disagreement, and less understanding, about this right than about almost any other current constitutional issue.
The Amendment, in Full
“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.”
Where It Came From
The amendment grew out of debates at the Constitutional Convention over standing armies. Many of the framers, drawing on English common law and their own recent experience under British rule, worried that a permanent professional military could threaten a free state, while state militias made up of armed citizens could not. Alexander Hamilton made a version of this argument in the Federalist Papers, and James Madison drafted the amendment as part of the Bill of Rights that Congress sent to the states in 1789 and that took effect in 1791.
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Supreme Court said very little about what the amendment actually protected. Early cases mainly established that it restrained the federal government, not the states — a limitation that would not begin to shift until the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections were extended to the Second Amendment much later.
A Right in Two Readings
Nearly all of the disagreement the American Bar Association points to comes down to one question: is this an individual right, belonging to each person regardless of militia service, or a collective right tied to service in an organized militia? Scholars on both sides have argued from the same 27 words for two centuries.
The modern Supreme Court has come down firmly on the individual-right side. Concerns about military power and citizen militias, which once sat at the center of the debate, have largely receded from the legal conversation — today’s fight is mostly about how far an individual right extends, not whether one exists.
Landmark Supreme Court Cases
How the Court’s reading of the amendment has evolved since 1939
United States v. Miller
The Court’s first serious look at the amendment, tying the right to keep and bear arms to militia service — the leading precedent for nearly 70 years.
District of Columbia v. Heller
The turning point. In a 5–4 ruling, the Court held for the first time that the amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm, unconnected to militia service, for lawful purposes such as self-defense in the home.
McDonald v. City of Chicago
Extended Heller to the states, holding that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right that binds state and local governments, not just the federal government.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen
Recognized a right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense, and set a new “text, history, and tradition” test that courts must use to judge whether a gun law is constitutional.
United States v. Rahimi
Applying the Bruen test, the Court upheld the federal law disarming people subject to domestic violence restraining orders, finding it consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
This is a summary for general background, not legal advice — for the full text of any opinion, see the Library of Congress’s Constitution Annotated.
Watch: A Documentary on the Second Amendment
A closer look at the history and modern debate
Go deeper on the origins, text, and modern reading of the Second Amendment.
Read the Full Article »
