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<p>BREAKING NEWS -- Divided three-judge D.C. Circuit panel holds that the District of Columbia's gun control laws violate individuals' Second Amendment rights: You can access today's lengthy D.C. Circuit ruling at this link.</p> <p>To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.</p>

     The Second Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, not a right of States or a right restricted to persons serving in militias.MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERALTable of ContentsIntroduction   The Unsettled Legal Landscape Textual and Structural Analysis "The Right of the People" "To Keep and Bear Arms" "A Well Regulated Militia, being Necessary to the Security of a Free State" Structural Considerations: The Bill of Rights and the Militia Powers The Original Understanding of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms The Right Inherited from England The Right in America before the Framing The Development of the Second...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version April 20, 2004, 9:03 a.m. Explaining EisentragerThe Second Amendment is for individual gun owners. By Dave Kopel As the Supreme Court considers whether the U.S. Constitution protects the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay — it hears oral arguments today in the case — the central issue is the meaning of a case involving illegal combatants from World War II: Johnson v. Eisentrager. No one knows if Eisentrager will be interpreted broadly enough for the government to win the Guantanamo case. But the more the Supreme...

Properly understood, the Second Amendment means exactly the same thing that it would have meant had the prefatory phrase about the militia been omitted. That prefatory phrase helps to illuminate the animating purpose of the Second Amendment, and it addressed a very specific eighteenth century political issue, but it does not create any tension or inconsistency with the operative clause, and it certainly does not alter or modify the meaning of the operative clause.