Second Amendment Center

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

A research library on the Second Amendment. It covers the English and founding-era sources, every major Supreme Court decision, a century of federal legislation, and the interpretations still argued in court. We state our own position openly and present the others fairly.

Text & History

Twenty-Seven Words

The Second Amendment’s twenty-seven words were ratified on December 15, 1791, as part of the Bill of Rights. They join a prefatory clause about “a well regulated Militia” to an operative guarantee of “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” and for much of the twentieth century Americans argued over how the two fit together: whether the Amendment secures a right of individuals or a right tied to service in an organized state militia.

The Supreme Court answered that central question in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), holding that the Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms for lawful purposes such as self-defense in the home, and applied the right to the states in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010). New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) extended it to carrying handguns in public and directed courts to judge gun laws by the Amendment’s text and the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation — a test refined in United States v. Rahimi (2024) and applied twice in June 2026, in United States v. Hemani and Wolford v. Lopez. The Court has agreed to decide, in its October 2026 Term, whether the Amendment protects AR-15-style rifles.

This library gathers the primary sources behind those debates — English and colonial antecedents, founding-era declarations and drafts, the Supreme Court’s decisions and the principal federal statutes — together with the strongest arguments on each side of the questions that remain open. PatriotMurica supports the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms; this section is built so that readers of every view can check the record for themselves, and it closes with the safety rules and resources that responsible gun owners share.

Scope. This center covers history, law and safety. PatriotMurica does not sell firearms, ammunition or firearm accessories, and nothing here is legal advice. Firearm laws vary by state and change often.

Amendment II in the Constitution Atlas thread: Arms and the Constitution Essay: Reading the Second Amendment

Before 1791

Founding-Era Sources

The English right, the state declarations of rights, the ratification debates and the Militia Act. These are the materials courts now read to understand the amendment’s original meaning.

1689
English Bill of Rights
After the Glorious Revolution, Parliament declared “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” The guarantee answered James II’s disarmament of his Protestant opponents; it was limited to Protestants and qualified by the words “as allowed by law.” The Supreme Court in Heller called it “the predecessor to our Second Amendment.”
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
1765–1769
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
William Blackstone, whose works the Supreme Court has called “the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,” listed “having arms for their defence” as the fifth auxiliary right of English subjects — “a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.”
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
June 12, 1776
Virginia Declaration of Rights, Section 13
George Mason’s declaration affirmed “That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state,” that standing armies in time of peace “should be avoided as dangerous to liberty,” and that the military should be under “strict subordination” to civil power. It spoke of the militia; it did not separately declare a right to keep or bear arms.
Source: National Archives
Primary Source
September 28, 1776
Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights, Article XIII
“That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up.” The Heller majority read “defence of themselves” as evidence of an individual right; Vermont adopted a nearly identical provision in 1777.
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
January 1788
Federalist No. 29
Alexander Hamilton defended Congress’s power to organize and discipline the militia. Drilling the whole population would be impractical: “Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped.” A select corps of well-trained militia, together with “a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms,” would be the best security against a standing army.
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
January 1788
Federalist No. 46
James Madison argued that a federal army could never overpower the states, because it would face “a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands,” and he pointed to “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
June–July 1788
Amendments proposed by the state ratifying conventions
Several conventions that ratified the Constitution urged amendments protecting arms. New Hampshire proposed that “Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” Virginia and New York proposed that the people have a right to keep and bear arms and that a well regulated militia is “the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State.”
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
June–September 1789
Madison’s draft and its revision in Congress
On June 8, 1789, James Madison proposed: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.” The House put the militia clause first and described the militia as “composed of the body of the People”; the Senate struck that phrase and the conscientious-objector clause and changed “the best security” to “necessary to the security” of a free State.
Source: Congressional Research Service (Constitution Annotated), via Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
May 8, 1792
Militia Act of 1792
Congress required that “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen” of the states between eighteen and forty-five be enrolled in the militia and provide himself with a musket or rifle and ammunition. The act reflects both the founding generation’s model of an armed citizen militia and the racial exclusions of its time; the Supreme Court later observed that its enrollment command was “virtually ignored for more than a century.”
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source

The Supreme Court

From Cruikshank to Rahimi

For most of American history the Court said little about the Second Amendment. Since 2008 it has held that the amendment protects an individual right, that the right applies to the states, and that modern regulations are measured against the nation’s historical tradition.

1876
United States v. Cruikshank
92 U.S. 542 · Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite
Holding. The First and Second Amendments restrain only the national government. The right of “bearing arms for a lawful purpose,” the Court said, “is not a right granted by the Constitution” nor dependent on it for its existence, so federal charges against private individuals for interfering with it could not stand.
Significance. The case arose from the 1873 Colfax Massacre in Louisiana, in which dozens of Black men were killed; the decision sharply limited federal protection of freedmen during Reconstruction. McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) later held that the Fourteenth Amendment does make the right enforceable against the states.
Primary Source
1886
Presser v. Illinois
116 U.S. 252 · Justice William B. Woods
Holding. Upheld an Illinois law forbidding unlicensed private military organizations to drill or parade with arms, reasoning that the Second Amendment limits only the federal government.
Significance. The Court added that states could not disarm the people so as to deprive the United States of “their rightful resource for maintaining the public security.” The Heller majority read Presser and Cruikshank as consistent with an individual right.
Primary Source
1939
United States v. Miller
307 U.S. 174 · Decided 8–0 · Justice James C. McReynolds
Holding. Reversed the dismissal of a National Firearms Act indictment for transporting an unregistered short-barreled shotgun, because nothing in the record showed that such a weapon had “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”
Significance. No lawyer appeared for the defendants. For decades many courts read Miller to support a militia-centered view of the Amendment; the Heller majority read it instead as limiting protection to weapons in common use for lawful purposes.
Primary Source
1995
United States v. Lopez
514 U.S. 549 · Decided 5–4 · Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
Holding. Struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 as beyond Congress’s commerce power, because possessing a gun in a school zone is not an economic activity that substantially affects interstate commerce.
Significance. A federalism ruling, not a Second Amendment one. Congress re-enacted the law in 1996, limited to firearms that have moved in or affect interstate commerce.
Primary Source
1997
Printz v. United States
521 U.S. 898 · Decided 5–4 · Justice Antonin Scalia
Holding. Struck down the Brady Act’s interim requirement that local chief law-enforcement officers conduct background checks on handgun buyers, because Congress may not commandeer state and local officers.
Significance. Also a federalism ruling. Justice Thomas’s concurrence observed that if the Second Amendment “is read to confer a personal right to ‘keep and bear arms,’” a colorable argument would exist against federal regulation of purely intrastate sales or possession of firearms.
Primary Source
2008
District of Columbia v. Heller
554 U.S. 570 · Decided 5–4 · Justice Antonin Scalia
Holding. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use it for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. The District’s ban on handguns in the home, and its requirement that other firearms be kept inoperable, violated that right.
Significance. The Court stressed that the right “is not unlimited” and that its opinion did not cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on possession by felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding carry in sensitive places, or conditions on commercial sales. Justices Stevens and Breyer each wrote a dissent joined by all four dissenters.
Primary Source
2010
McDonald v. City of Chicago
561 U.S. 742 · Decided 5–4 · Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Holding. The Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller fully applicable to the states; the Court reversed a decision upholding Chicago’s handgun ban.
Significance. A four-Justice plurality relied on the Due Process Clause; Justice Thomas, supplying the fifth vote, would have relied on the Privileges or Immunities Clause and urged the Court to revisit the Slaughter-House Cases.
Primary Source
2016
Caetano v. Massachusetts
577 U.S. 411 · Per curiam
Holding. Vacated a Massachusetts decision upholding a ban on stun guns, because the state court’s reasons — that stun guns were not in common use at the founding, were “unusual” as a modern invention and were not military weapons — contradicted Heller.
Significance. Reaffirmed that the Amendment extends, prima facie, to all bearable arms, “even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, concurred in the judgment.
Primary Source
2022
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen
597 U.S. 1 · Decided 6–3 · Justice Clarence Thomas
Holding. New York’s requirement that applicants show “proper cause” for a license to carry a handgun in public violated the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.
Significance. Replaced the two-step, means-end framework the courts of appeals had used with a test of text and history: when the Amendment’s plain text covers conduct, the government must show that its regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. At the time, 43 states issued carry licenses on objective criteria.
Primary Source
2024
Garland v. Cargill
602 U.S. 406 · Decided 6–3 · Justice Clarence Thomas
Holding. A semiautomatic rifle fitted with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” under the National Firearms Act, because it does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger”; the ATF rule classifying bump stocks as machineguns exceeded its statutory authority.
Significance. A statutory ruling, not a Second Amendment one. Justice Alito, concurring, wrote that Congress “can amend the law”; Justice Sotomayor dissented for three Justices.
Primary Source
2024
United States v. Rahimi
602 U.S. 680 · Decided 8–1 · Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Holding. Upheld the federal law disarming people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders: “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
Significance. Clarified that Bruen calls for a historical analogue, not a “historical twin,” drawing on founding-era surety and “going armed” laws. Five Justices wrote concurrences; Justice Thomas dissented.
Primary Source
2025
Bondi v. VanDerStok
604 U.S. 458 · Decided 7–2 · Justice Neil Gorsuch
Holding. Rejected a facial challenge to an ATF rule adopted in 2022, holding that the Gun Control Act of 1968 can reach certain weapon parts kits and unfinished frames or receivers that can readily be made into working firearms.
Significance. A statutory ruling on so-called ghost guns. Justices Thomas and Alito each dissented.
Primary Source
2025
Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos
605 U.S. 280 · Decided 9–0 · Justice Elena Kagan
Holding. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act barred Mexico’s lawsuit against American gun manufacturers, because the complaint did not plausibly allege that they aided and abetted unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers.
Significance. Applying ordinary aiding-and-abetting principles to PLCAA’s exception for knowing violations of firearms-sales laws, the Court held that routine business practices and general awareness that some guns reach criminals do not make a manufacturer an accomplice to unlawful sales.
Primary Source
2026
United States v. Hemani
608 U.S. 772 · Decided 9–0 · Justice Neil Gorsuch
Holding. The government’s prosecution of Ali Hemani under the unlawful-user provision of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) — for keeping a gun in his home while regularly using marijuana — was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The Court affirmed the Fifth Circuit.
Significance. Justice Gorsuch wrote for seven Justices; Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, concurred only in the judgment, making the judgment unanimous. The Court found that founding-era “habitual drunkard” laws, which reached people rendered incapable of managing their affairs, usually after some legal process, were not relevantly similar. It called its decision narrow, leaving open laws disarming addicts or people who are presently intoxicated, the felon-in-possession ban, and prosecutions with individualized proof of danger.
Primary Source
2026
Wolford v. Lopez
609 U.S. 185 · Decided 6–3 · Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Holding. Hawaii’s law barring licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public, such as stores and restaurants, without the owner’s express authorization violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.
Significance. The law reversed the common-law default that property open to the public may be entered unless the owner objects. The Court found Hawaii’s historical analogues, chiefly colonial and early state laws against unauthorized hunting on another’s land, too dissimilar and gave no weight to an 1865 Louisiana Black Code provision. Justice Kagan dissented, and Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, arguing that the law applied the property owner’s right to exclude.
Primary Source

Congress

Federal Firearms Legislation

Major federal statutes since 1934, each in its own terms.

June 26, 1934
National Firearms Act
The first major federal firearms law used Congress’s taxing power to regulate machine guns, short-barreled shotguns and rifles, silencers and certain concealable weapons, imposing a $200 tax on transfers and requiring registration. The Supreme Court rejected a Second Amendment challenge to it in United States v. Miller (1939). The $200 rate was never raised; a 2025 law cut it to $0 for everything but machine guns and destructive devices.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
1938
Federal Firearms Act
Required manufacturers and dealers shipping firearms in interstate commerce to hold a federal license, and made it a crime for people convicted of a crime of violence, and for fugitives from justice, to receive firearms shipped across state lines. In Tot v. United States (1943) the Supreme Court struck down the act’s presumption that such a person’s possession of a gun proved it had been received in interstate commerce. The Gun Control Act of 1968 replaced it.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
October 22, 1968
Gun Control Act of 1968
Enacted months after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the act replaced the 1938 law with a broader federal licensing system, generally required interstate firearm transfers to go through licensed dealers, defined categories of people — among them felons, fugitives, unlawful drug users and people adjudicated mentally defective — who may not receive firearms, and restricted imports of firearms not suitable for sporting purposes. Its Title II rewrote the National Firearms Act.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
May 19, 1986
Firearms Owners’ Protection Act
Signed by President Reagan, the act eased several 1968 restrictions: it let dealers sell rifles and shotguns in person to residents of other states where legal in both states, limited warrantless compliance inspections of dealers, protected travelers transporting unloaded, inaccessible firearms between places where they may lawfully have them, and barred any federal registry of ordinary firearms owners. It also banned civilian transfer and possession of machine guns not lawfully possessed before the law took effect.
Source: Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
November 29, 1990
Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990
Made it a federal crime to knowingly possess a firearm in a school zone. The Supreme Court struck it down in United States v. Lopez (1995) as beyond Congress’s commerce power; Congress re-enacted it in 1996, limited to a firearm that “has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.”
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
November 30, 1993
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act
Named for James Brady, the White House press secretary wounded in the 1981 attempt on President Reagan’s life, the act imposed an interim five-day waiting period and background check for handgun sales by licensed dealers and directed the creation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which began operating on November 30, 1998, and covers firearm transfers by licensed dealers. In Printz v. United States (1997) the Supreme Court struck down the interim requirement that local officers conduct the checks.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
September 13, 1994
Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act (1994 assault-weapons ban)
Part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, it banned the manufacture, transfer and possession of specified semiautomatic assault weapons and of new ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds, exempting those lawfully possessed before enactment. Congress wrote it to expire after ten years; it lapsed on September 13, 2004, and has not been renewed.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
September 30, 1996
Lautenberg Amendment
Extended the federal firearms prohibition to anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, without the exception for government-issued firearms that applies to most other prohibitions, so it reaches police officers and service members as well. The same appropriations law re-enacted the Gun-Free School Zones Act.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
October 26, 2005
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act
Signed by President George W. Bush, the act generally bars civil suits against manufacturers, distributors, dealers and importers of firearms or ammunition for harm caused by others’ criminal or unlawful misuse of their products. It preserves exceptions, including suits over knowing violations of laws governing sales or marketing, negligent entrustment and product defects. In 2025 the Supreme Court unanimously held that it barred Mexico’s lawsuit against American gun makers.
Source: Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
January 8, 2008
NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007
Passed after the April 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, whose perpetrator had passed background checks despite a disqualifying mental-health history, the law gave states incentives to send more complete criminal, mental-health, restraining-order and domestic-violence records to NICS and required participating states to offer a way to seek relief from mental-health-based firearms disabilities.
Source: Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
June 25, 2022
Bipartisan Safer Communities Act
Enacted after mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the law added enhanced background checks, including juvenile records, for buyers under 21; funded state crisis-intervention programs, including extreme-risk protection order (“red flag”) programs; extended the domestic-violence misdemeanor prohibition to people in dating relationships; created federal crimes of straw purchasing and firearms trafficking; and clarified who must be licensed as a dealer.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
July 4, 2025
National Firearms Act tax cut in the 2025 reconciliation law (Pub. L. 119–21)
The budget reconciliation law signed on July 4, 2025, widely known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, reduced the National Firearms Act’s making and transfer taxes, $200 for most items, to $0 for suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns and “any other weapons,” effective January 1, 2026. The $200 tax on machine guns and destructive devices remains, and registration is still required.
Source: Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source

Competing Interpretations

What the Amendment Protects

Serious scholars and judges disagree. We present each reading so that its own advocates would recognize it.

Opposing View / Debate

Does the Second Amendment protect an individual right, or a right tied to militia service?

Before 2008 the Supreme Court had never squarely decided the question, and many federal courts read United States v. Miller (1939) to tie the right to militia service. District of Columbia v. Heller resolved it 5–4 in favor of an individual right, but the competing readings still shape arguments about the right’s scope.

Heller majority (Justice Scalia)

The prefatory clause announces a purpose but does not limit the operative clause. “The right of the people,” as elsewhere in the Bill of Rights, refers to individuals; “keep and bear Arms” meant to have and carry weapons; and the Amendment codified a pre-existing right in which self-defense was central. The militia comprised all able-bodied men, and securing their right to arms preserved the citizens’ militia against federal disarmament.

Justice Stevens, dissenting

Stevens agreed that the right can be enforced by individuals but argued that its scope follows its purpose: protecting the right of the people of each state to maintain a well-regulated militia, in response to fears that Congress would disarm the state militias. Nothing in the text or its drafting history, he wrote, showed any interest in limiting legislatures’ power to regulate private civilian uses of firearms, and “hundreds of judges” had relied on Miller.

Justice Breyer, dissenting

Even if the Amendment protects an interest in self-defense, Breyer argued, the right is not absolute. Courts should weigh the burdens a gun law imposes against the public-safety interests it serves, and under that interest-balancing approach the District’s handgun ban was a permissible response to handgun violence in a high-crime urban area.

The scholarly debate

Before Heller, legal scholars such as Sanford Levinson, in “The Embarrassing Second Amendment” (1989), and historians such as Joyce Lee Malcolm argued that the individual-right reading deserved more weight than courts had given it. Historians such as Saul Cornell have argued that the founders understood the right chiefly as a civic obligation connected to militia service. The eighteenth-century evidence remains contested.

Sources

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
District of Columbia v. Heller (Stevens, J., dissenting) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
District of Columbia v. Heller (Breyer, J., dissenting) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
Amdt2.2 Historical Background on Second Amendment · Congressional Research Service (Constitution Annotated), via Cornell Legal Information Institute

Opposing View / Debate

How should courts apply Bruen’s test of text, history and tradition?

Bruen (2022) requires the government to show that a challenged gun law is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Rahimi (2024) clarified that the test calls for historical analogues rather than historical twins, and the Court applied it again in Hemani and Wolford in June 2026. Judges and scholars remain divided over how closely a modern law must resemble its predecessors, which historical periods count, and whether the test can be applied consistently.

Bruen majority (Justice Thomas)

When the Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects it. Judges should not weigh a law’s benefits against its burdens; the government must instead identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, “not a historical twin,” that burdened the right in a comparable way and for a comparable reason.

Rahimi majority (Chief Justice Roberts)

Some lower courts misread the method: the Court’s precedents “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.” The question is whether a modern law fits the principles underlying the nation’s regulatory tradition, and founding-era surety and “going armed” laws established that people found to threaten others with violence may be temporarily disarmed.

Justice Thomas, dissenting in Rahimi

Faithfully applied, Bruen requires a historical regulation that addressed a comparable problem through a comparable burden. In Thomas’s view, “Not a single historical regulation” justified disarming people subject to civil restraining orders without a criminal conviction, and the surety and “going armed” laws imposed very different burdens.

Critics of the history-and-tradition test

Justice Breyer’s Bruen dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, argued that courts may properly consider the dangers of gun violence and that a history-only approach creates serious practical problems. Concurring in Hemani, Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, called Bruen “unworkable,” pointed to inconsistent lower-court rulings on the federal ban on gun possession by felons, and urged a return to means-end scrutiny.

The June 2026 decisions

Writing for the Court in Hemani, Justice Gorsuch held that founding-era laws on “habitual drunkards,” which reached people so impaired they could not manage their affairs and usually required some legal process, could not justify automatically disarming a regular marijuana user. In Wolford, Justice Barrett’s concurrence stressed that history plays different roles at Bruen’s two steps, while Justice Kagan’s dissent argued that colonial laws barring guns on another’s land without the owner’s consent were close enough analogues.

Sources

New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
United States v. Hemani, 608 U.S. 772 (2026) (preliminary print) · Supreme Court of the United States
Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. 185 (2026) (preliminary print) · Supreme Court of the United States

Opposing View / Debate

Which regulations does the Second Amendment permit?

The Court has said since Heller that, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” The disagreements concern which people may be disarmed, which weapons are protected and where carrying may be restricted. On June 30, 2026, the Court agreed to decide whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15-style and similar semiautomatic rifles, in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, set for argument on December 2, 2026.

What Heller left in place

Heller said that nothing in its opinion should cast doubt on “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in “sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,” or conditions on the commercial sale of arms. It recognized a historical tradition of prohibiting “dangerous and unusual weapons” while protecting arms “in common use” for lawful purposes.

Advocates of broader protection

Gun-rights advocates argue that semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15, owned by millions of Americans, are in common use and therefore protected; that nonviolent offenders should not lose the right for life; and that some states have used sensitive-place designations and consent rules, like the Hawaii law struck down in Wolford, to recreate the discretionary licensing Bruen rejected. In a 2025 statement, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that AR-15s are legal in 41 states and that the Court should address the issue “in the next Term or two.”

Advocates of broader regulation

Gun-safety advocates and many states argue that bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines target arms suited to military use and prominent in mass shootings, that legislatures need room to disarm people who pose a danger before they are convicted of a crime, and that the Constitution leaves elected officials substantial authority over where guns may be carried. Federal appeals courts have largely upheld state bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

Questions still open

Rahimi upheld temporary disarmament of people found to pose a credible threat, and Hemani rejected disarming a marijuana user without an individualized showing of danger, but the Court has not decided whether the lifetime federal ban on gun possession by felons may be applied to nonviolent offenders. Some lower courts, including the Third and Fifth Circuits, have ruled for particular nonviolent offenders, and courts have reached differing results on restrictions affecting adults under 21.

Sources

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
Snope v. Brown, No. 24-203 (June 2, 2025) (denial of certiorari, with statement of Justice Kavanaugh) · Supreme Court of the United States
Docket No. 25-238, Viramontes v. Cook County (consolidated with No. 25-566, Grant v. Higgins) · Supreme Court of the United States
United States v. Hemani, 608 U.S. 772 (2026) (preliminary print) · Supreme Court of the United States

Traditions

States, Militia, Field and Range

State Constitutional Guarantees

Arms-bearing rights in state constitutions, from the Revolution to today.

State declarations of rights came first. Between independence and the ratification of the Bill of Rights, four states — Pennsylvania, Vermont, North Carolina and Massachusetts — adopted provisions on bearing arms, and between 1789 and 1820 nine more followed. Some spoke of bearing arms “in defence of themselves and the State,” others of “the common defence,” wording the Heller majority and dissenters read in opposite ways.

Today every state constitution except those of California, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York protects a right to keep and bear arms; Iowa voters added one in 2022. Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri and Iowa have gone further, requiring courts to apply strict scrutiny to restrictions on the right.

State courts interpret these guarantees independently of the Second Amendment, and nineteenth-century state decisions such as Nunn v. State (Georgia, 1846) were central evidence in Heller. Because state provisions can protect more than the federal minimum, they remain an active field of litigation.

1776
Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights, Article XIII
“That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state.” Vermont adopted a nearly identical provision in its 1777 constitution.
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Primary Source
1776
North Carolina Declaration of Rights, Section XVII
“That the people have a right to bear arms, for the defence of the State.” The Heller majority acknowledged that the words could plausibly be read to protect only militia service, but noted that North Carolina’s Supreme Court gave the right a broader public-safety meaning in 1843.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
1780
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, Article XVII
“The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence.” The article added that in time of peace armies “ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature.”
Congressional Research Service (Constitution Annotated), via Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
1846
Nunn v. State (Georgia)
The Georgia Supreme Court struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly, describing the right as belonging to “the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only.” Heller cited the decision as capturing how the Amendment’s two clauses fit together.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
2012–2022
Modern strict-scrutiny amendments
Louisiana (2012), Missouri (2014) and Iowa (2022), along with Alabama, amended their constitutions to require strict judicial scrutiny of restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Iowa’s provision declares the right “a fundamental individual right” and subjects “any and all restrictions” to strict scrutiny.
Duke Center for Firearms Law
Historical Record

The Militia in American History

From colonial militias to the National Guard.

Colonial Americans relied on militias of ordinary men who were expected to keep arms and turn out for training and emergencies, and they distrusted standing armies. The Revolution’s first battles, at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, followed a British march to seize militia arms and supplies stored at Concord.

The Constitution gave Congress power to call forth, organize, arm and discipline the militia while reserving to the states the appointment of officers and the authority to train it. The Militia Act of 1792 enrolled free, able-bodied white male citizens between eighteen and forty-five, but its command was, in the Supreme Court’s words, “virtually ignored for more than a century.”

Beginning with the Dick Act of 1903, Congress rebuilt the organized militia as the National Guard under federal standards and funding. Federal law today divides the militia into the organized militia, the National Guard and Naval Militia, and the unorganized militia. How that history bears on the scope of the individual right was one of the questions dividing the Justices in Heller.

April 19, 1775
Lexington and Concord
Massachusetts militia and minutemen confronted British regulars sent to seize military stores at Concord, opening the Revolutionary War. The battlefields are preserved at Minute Man National Historical Park.
National Park Service
Historical Record
1787
The Militia Clauses
Congress may 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” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 16).
Source: National Archives
Primary Source
May 1792
The Militia Acts of 1792
Congress authorized the President to call forth the militia to repel invasions, suppress insurrections and execute the laws, and required the enrollment of free, able-bodied white male citizens aged eighteen to forty-five, each to arm and equip himself. President Washington used the calling-forth power in 1794 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Historical Record
January 21, 1903
The Dick Act
Divided the militia into an organized militia, the National Guard of the states, and a reserve militia; gave the Guard the Regular Army’s organization; and provided federal funds and Regular Army instructors for training.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
1916; 1933
The National Defense Act of 1916 and the 1933 amendments
Congress “federalized” the National Guard, requiring guardsmen to swear a dual oath to the nation and their state; since 1933, anyone who enlists in a state Guard unit also enlists in the National Guard of the United States.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
The militia defined today
Federal law defines the militia of the United States as able-bodied males at least 17 and under 45 years of age who are, or have declared their intention to become, citizens, together with female citizens who are members of the National Guard; it is divided into the organized militia (the National Guard and the Naval Militia) and the unorganized militia.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source

Hunting, Conservation and the Shooting Sports

How hunters and recreational shooters help pay for American conservation.

Hunting and recreational shooting are among the most common reasons Americans give for owning firearms: in a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 32 percent of gun owners named hunting as a major reason and 30 percent named sport shooting.

They are also bound up with a distinctive model of conservation funding. Since 1934, waterfowl hunters have been required to buy a federal duck stamp, and since 1937 the Pittman–Robertson Act has directed federal excise taxes on firearms and ammunition, and later on archery equipment, to state wildlife agencies, first for wildlife restoration and later also for hunter education and public target ranges.

Every state offers hunter-education courses, which many require of new hunters, teaching safe firearm handling, ethics and conservation. The Civilian Marksmanship Program, which traces its lineage to 1903, promotes marksmanship and firearm safety, especially among young people.

March 16, 1934
Federal Duck Stamp
The Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act requires waterfowl hunters 16 and older to carry a federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp; proceeds go to the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
September 2, 1937
Pittman–Robertson Act (Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act)
The act dedicates federal excise taxes, today 11 percent on long guns, shells and cartridges and 10 percent on pistols and revolvers, plus taxes on archery equipment, to a fund apportioned among state wildlife agencies. A 2019 amendment added the promotion of hunting and recreational shooting to the act’s purposes.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
May 10, 2019
Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act
Made it easier for states to use Pittman–Robertson funds on public target ranges, allowing federal funds to cover up to 90 percent of the cost of acquiring land for, expanding or building a range.
Cornell Legal Information Institute
Primary Source
Hunter education
State hunter-education courses, which Pittman–Robertson funds may support, teach safe firearm handling, hunting ethics and wildlife conservation. The International Hunter Education Association links to each state’s courses.
International Hunter Education Association–USA
Historical Record
1903; 1996
Civilian Marksmanship Program
The program traces its lineage to 1903, when Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt established the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and the National Matches. Since 1996 it has been run by a federally chartered nonprofit corporation that trains citizens in marksmanship and firearm safety, with a priority on youth.
Source: Civilian Marksmanship Program
Historical Record

By the Numbers

Firearm Ownership in America

Only figures with an authoritative source.

32%
U.S. adults who personally own a gun: Another 10% live in a household where someone else owns one. Pew Research Center survey, June 5–11, 2023.; Source: Pew Research Center; 72%
Gun owners citing protection as a major reason: Hunting 32%, sport shooting 30%, collecting 15%, job 7% (June 2023).; Source: Pew Research Center; 47% rural · 30% suburban · 20% urban
Gun ownership by community type: Share of adults in each type of community who say they personally own a gun (June 2023).; Source: Pew Research Center; 45% Republican · 20% Democratic
Gun ownership by party: Includes independents who lean toward each party (June 2023).; Source: Pew Research Center; 49% · 49%
Does gun ownership make the country safer?: Equal shares say gun ownership increases safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and that it reduces safety by giving too many people access to firearms (June 5–11, 2023).; Source: Pew Research Center; 58% · 26% · 15%
Views of gun laws: Say gun laws should be stricter, are about right, or should be less strict (June 5–11, 2023).; Source: Pew Research Center; 88% Republican · 89% Democratic
Common ground on mental illness and gun purchases: Share in each party who favor preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns (June 5–11, 2023).; Source: Pew Research Center; 44,447
U.S. gun deaths, 2024: CDC data: 62% were suicides (27,593) and 35% homicides (15,364); the rest involved law enforcement, accidents or undetermined circumstances.; Source: Pew Research Center; 57%
U.S. suicides involving a gun, 2024: 27,593 of 48,824 suicides (CDC data).; Source: Pew Research Center; Nearly 49 million
NICS background checks, first six years: Processed from November 30, 1998, through December 31, 2004; about 916,000 would-be buyers were prohibited, according to findings enacted by Congress in 2008.; Source: Cornell Legal Information Institute; 43
States issuing carry licenses on objective criteria (2022): As counted by the Supreme Court in Bruen; six states and the District of Columbia then had discretionary “may issue” regimes.; Source: Cornell Legal Information Institute; 45
State constitutions protecting a right to keep and bear arms: All but California, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York, counting the provision Iowa voters adopted in November 2022.; Source: Duke Center for Firearms Law

Responsibility

Firearm Safety

A right exercised responsibly: the fundamental rules, safe storage, and help for anyone in crisis.

01Treat every firearm as if it is loaded, and check its condition yourself each time you handle it.
02Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction — never at anything you are not willing to destroy.
03Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until your sights are on the target and you have decided to shoot.
04Be sure of your target and of what is in front of it and beyond it.
05Keep firearms unloaded until you are ready to use them.
06Store firearms securely — unloaded, locked and separate from ammunition — where children and other unauthorized people cannot reach them.
07Know how your firearm operates, and use only the correct ammunition for it.
08Wear eye and ear protection when shooting.
09Never handle firearms after drinking alcohol or using drugs or medications that impair judgment.
10If someone in your home may be at risk of suicide, store firearms securely away from the home for a time and reach out for help: call or text 988.

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Free, confidential support 24 hours a day, every day, for anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, by phone, text or online chat.
Call or text 988
Veterans Crisis Line
Confidential crisis support 24 hours a day for veterans, service members and their families; enrollment in VA benefits or health care is not required. Veterans can also text 838255.
Dial 988, then press 1
Project ChildSafe
A program of the National Shooting Sports Foundation that has distributed free gun locks, often through local law-enforcement agencies, since 1998, and publishes safe-handling and safe-storage guidance for gun-owning families.
VA “Keep It Secure”
Department of Veterans Affairs guidance on secure firearm storage — cable locks, lockboxes and gun safes — as part of suicide prevention for veterans and their families.
Hunter education in your state
The International Hunter Education Association links to state hunter-education courses, which teach safe firearm handling, hunting ethics and conservation and are required of many new hunters.

Sources

The Bill of Rights: A Transcription · National Archives
Amendment II. Right to Bear Arms · Congressional Research Service (Constitution Annotated), via Cornell Legal Information Institute
Amdt2.2 Historical Background on Second Amendment · Congressional Research Service (Constitution Annotated), via Cornell Legal Information Institute
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
United States v. Hemani, 608 U.S. 772 (2026) (preliminary print) · Supreme Court of the United States
Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. 185 (2026) (preliminary print) · Supreme Court of the United States
Docket No. 25-238, Viramontes v. Cook County (consolidated with No. 25-566, Grant v. Higgins) · Supreme Court of the United States
Snope v. Brown, No. 24-203 (June 2, 2025) (denial of certiorari, with statement of Justice Kavanaugh) · Supreme Court of the United States
Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990) · Cornell Legal Information Institute
18 U.S. Code § 922 – Unlawful acts · Cornell Legal Information Institute
26 U.S. Code § 5811 – Transfer tax · Cornell Legal Information Institute
Key facts about Americans and guns · Pew Research Center
Gun Violence Widely Viewed as a Major – and Growing – National Problem · Pew Research Center
What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. · Pew Research Center
Does Bruen Herald the End of Constitutional Strict-Scrutiny Amendments? · Duke Center for Firearms Law