Citation

Van Alstyne W. J. Firearms Public Policy 1995; 7(1): 1-20.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, Second Amendment Foundation)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Perhaps no provision in the Constitution causes one to stumble quite so much on a first reading, or second, or third reading, as the short provision in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. No doubt this stumbling occurs because, despite the brevity of this amendment, as one reads, there is an apparent non sequitur or disconnection of a sort in mid-sentence. The amendment opens with a recitation about a need for "a well regulated Militia." But having stipulated to the need for "a well regulated Militia," the amendment then declares that the right secured by the amendment -- the described right that is to be free of "infringement" -- is not (or not just) the right of a state, or of the United States, to provide a well regulated militia. Rather, it is "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms."


The postulation of a "right of the people to keep and bear Arms" would make sense standing alone, however, even if it necessarily left some questions still to be settled. It would make sense in just the same unforced way we understand even upon a first reading of the neighboring clause in the Bill of Rights, which uses the exact same phrase in describing something as "the right of the people" that "shall not be violated" (or "infringed"). Just as the Second Amendment declares that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed," so, too, the Fourth Amendment declares: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.Here, in the familiar setting of the Fourth Amendment, we are not at all confused in our take on the meaning of the amendment; it secures to each of us personally (as well as to all of us collectively) a certain right -- even if we are also uncertain of its scope.