130 Chapter 4Chapter 4 || Civil LibertiesCivil LibertiesThe Right to Bear Arms
Until recently, the right to bear arms was the only civil liberty that the Supreme Court
had played a relatively minor role in defining. Between 1791 and 2007, the Court
issued only four rulings directly pertaining to the Second Amendment. The federal
courts had always interpreted the Second Amendment’s awkward phrasing—“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”—as a right to bear arms within the
context of serving in a militia, rather than as an individual right to own a gun.
Although legal conflict over gun ownership has intensified only recently, battles over
guns have always been intense in the broader political realm. Interest groups such as the
National Rifle Association have long asserted that the Second Amendment guarantees
an individual right to bear arms.^105 Critics of this view emphasize the first clause of the
amendment and point to the frequent mention of state militias in congressional debates
at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted.^106 They argue that the Second Amendment
was adopted to reassure Antifederalist advocates of states’ rights that state militias, not
a national standing army, would provide national security. In this view, the national
armed forces and the National Guard have made the Second Amendment obsolete.
Before the Court’s recent entry into this debate, Congress and state and local
lawmakers had largely defined gun ownership and gun carrying rights, creating
significant variation among the states. Wyoming and Montana have virtually no
restrictions on gun ownership, for example, whereas California and Connecticut
have many. At the national level, Congress tends to respond to crime waves or
high-profile assassinations by passing new gun control laws. The broadest one, the
Gun Control Act of 1968, was passed in the wake of the assassinations of Robert F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The law sets standards for gun dealers, bans the
sale of weapons through the mail, and restricts the sale of new machine guns, among
other provisions.
Following the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981, the push for
stronger gun control laws intensified. Spearheading this effort was Sarah Brady,
whose husband, James Brady (Reagan’s press secretary), was shot and disabled in
the assassination attempt. It took nearly 13 years for the campaign to bear fruit, but in
1993 Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Brady Bill, which mandates a
background check and a five-day waiting period for any handgun purchase.EXPLORE WHY THE SECOND
AMENDMENT’S MEANING
ON GUN RIGHTS IS OFTEN
DEBATEDWhile the Constitution guarantees
the individual right to bear arms (as
illustrated here by the woman taking
target practice), the shootings at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in Parkland, Florida, shocked
the nation. In response, students from
the school organized the national
March for Our Lives in effort to urge
the government to pass gun reform.Full_05_APT_64431_ch04_102-147.indd 130 16/11/18 1:30 PM