Second Amendment: An individual right, not a collective right

By Bryan Fischer

The U.S. Supreme Court today takes up the case of Washington, D.C.'s ban on the personal possession of handguns. The 30-year old ban has left law-abiding residents in the District defenseless and turned D.C. into the murder capital of the world.

The ban has been challenged on the absolutely correct grounds that it violates the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right of every American to keep and bear arms.

The Second Amendment reads, "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."(emphasis added)

Bill of Rights protects individual rights

This is clearly, as are the other rights identified in the Bill of Rights, an individual right, not a group right. You will notice the language makes this plain: it does not protect the right of a militia to bear arms, but the right of the people to bear arms.

Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury for Presidents Jefferson and Madison, explicitly declared, "The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the rights of the people at large or considered as individuals ... It establishes ... rights of the individual as inalienable."

As historian David Barton observed, "[E]ach of the Amendments offers to every citizen a protection of his or her individual rights against potential abuse or intrusion by the government." (emphasis in original)

The First Amendment protects our individual right to religious expression, speech and the press. The Third protects the sanctity of individual homes against government military intrusion. The Fourth protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth and Sixth protect an individual's right to due process. The Seventh protects an individual's right to trial by jury, and the Eighth protects the individual against government torture. None of these, not a single one, is a collective right. They are intensely individual rights.

It is illogical, irrational, and betrays an ignorance of American history and jurisprudence to isolate the Second Amendment and argue that it protects only a collective right rather than an individual one.

The Bill of Rights represented an effort on the part of the Founders to identify those "inalienable" rights granted to us by our Creator. The right to self-defense is surely among them.

Rooted in teaching of Jesus

The founder of Christianity at one point instructed his followers, "Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one" (Luke 22:36), thus giving his explicit support to the right of individuals to protect themselves from assault, using a weapon of lethal force if necessary.

(Some, in opposition, will cite Jesus' admonition to "turn the other cheek," but Jesus is there clearly talking about an insult, not a physical assault. To strike someone on the right cheek involves a backhanded slap, not an attack which endangers physical safety.)

The Founders on the Second Amendment

Our Founding Fathers without question understood the right to self-protection to be an individual right rather than a collective one. Said Alexander Hamilton, "The Supreme Being ... invested him [man] with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety."

Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws was the most influential legal commentary in American jurisprudence when the Second Amendment was framed, said that "citizens" have "the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense."

St. George Tucker, one of most distinguished legal scholars in early America and a federal judge under President James Madison, declared, "The right of self-defence is the first law of nature ... Wherever the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."

James Story, the founder of Harvard Law School and a Supreme Court Justice for 34 years, wrote of the Second Amendment, in his Commentaries on the United States Constitution, that "the right of citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic ..." (emphasis added)

In 1982, the Senate Judiciary Committee reviewed the enactment of the Second Amendment and reminds us that the Senate in 1789 clearly indicated its intent that the right "be an individual one, for private purposes" when it rejected an amendment that would have reserved gun ownership "for the common defense" only.

The Senate concluded, "[W]hat is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry arms in a peaceful manner."

The views of the Founders themselves on this matter are unambiguous.

Samuel Adams said, "The Constitution [should] never be construed ... to prevent the people of the United States from keeping their own arms."

Patrick Henry, of "Give me liberty" fame, said, "The great object is that every man be armed ... Every one who is able may have a gun."

Here is Richard Henry Lee, a framer of the Second Amendment: "[T]o preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

No less a personage than George Washington averred that "A free people ought ... to be armed."

Noah Webster observed that, "The supreme power in American cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed."

The colonies often had laws that actually required citizens to be armed, including the New Plymouth colony of Pilgrim fame. The Pilgrims actually instituted a fine for any person who was found to be unarmed.

In 1770, Georgia, believe it or not, passed a law that actually required every citizen to arm themselves when going to church: Every Georgian was ordered by law "to carry firearms to places of public worship."

This was likely to ensure that Georgians would be prepared to defend themselves against a surprise attack from Indian tribes, who were smart enough to figure out that if everybody was in one place at one time — in church — and were unarmed, places of worship would make irresistibly attractive targets.

Imagine that — there was a time in America when you could get arrested for not packing heat to church!

Militia = the whole body of the people

As far as the "militia" is concerned, it is clear that the Founders regarded the "militia" to consist of every individual citizen rather than just the organized military.

For example, Richard Henry Lee said, "A militia ... are in fact the people themselves."

George Mason, the "Father of the Bill of Rights:" "Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people."

Tench Coxe, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington, said, "The militia ... are ... the people at large."

In fact, current federal law states, "The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 [and] under 45 years of age."

Strikingly, as is true of many states, Idaho's own constitution still reads, "All able-bodied male persons, residents of this state, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, shall be enrolled in the militia." Whoa.

Thus, as Barton says, "[T]he guarantee of the U.S. Constitution concerning the right to keep and bear arms was always understood to be inclusive of and extended to every "able-bodied citizen." (emphasis in original)

Original intent

With regard to the Supreme Court's responsibility today, to rule on the D.C. ban on the right of individuals in D.C. to keep and bear arms, Jefferson said, "On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

Thus, if the Supreme Court does as it should and allows its deliberations to be guided by the counsel of Thomas Jefferson, its ruling on D.C.'s handgun ban will be clear and unambiguous.

(Source: David Barton, The Second Amendment. Wallbuilder Press, 2000)

© Bryan Fischer