Constitution

The Second Amendment: The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The Second Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and the Supreme Court has held it protects an individual right.

4Conservative Editors · Published November 8, 2026

The text

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.

In plain English

The Amendment has two parts: a prefatory clause ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State") and an operative clause ("the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed").

The operative clause. "The people" appears in the First, Second, Fourth and Ninth Amendments and refers to the people as individuals. To "keep" arms is to own them; to "bear" them is to carry them.

The prefatory clause. It states one purpose of the right: the militia, which in the Founding era meant the body of the people capable of bearing arms. A "well regulated" militia meant one in good order and training, not one controlled by the government.

"Shall not be infringed." The wording admits no exception, but, as with other rights, the courts have recognized some limits, such as bans on carrying firearms in sensitive places and on possession by felons.

The right was understood as a pre-existing right, one the Amendment protects rather than creates.

What the Founders said

Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 29 about the militia and the need for a well-regulated one, while Madison, in Federalist No. 46, contrasted the American situation with that of European kingdoms, where governments "are afraid to trust the people with arms." He pointed to the advantage Americans had "of being armed" over the people of almost every other nation, and said a standing army would be met by a militia of near half a million citizens with arms in their hands.

The 1689 English Bill of Rights had guaranteed Protestants arms "suitable to their condition and as allowed by law." Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason, said the militia was "the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state." Pennsylvania's 1776 constitution declared that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state."

Several ratifying conventions, including Virginia, North Carolina and New York, asked for an amendment securing the right.

How the courts have read it

  • United States v. Cruikshank (1876): the Second Amendment restricts only the national government; the case left freedmen in Louisiana disarmed.
  • United States v. Miller (1939): a short-barreled shotgun was not shown to have a relationship to a militia, and the Court upheld the National Firearms Act's registration requirement as applied.
  • District of Columbia v. Heller (2008): the Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense in the home; D.C.'s handgun ban was unconstitutional.
  • McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010): the right applies to the states through the 14th Amendment.
  • New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022): the right extends to carrying handguns in public for self-defense, and gun regulations must be consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.
  • United States v. Rahimi (2024): the government may disarm a person subject to a domestic-violence restraining order based on a finding that he poses a credible threat; Justice Thomas dissented alone.

Why it matters now

For most of the twentieth century, the Second Amendment was a neglected provision. Heller, in 2008, restored it to the Bill of Rights as an individual right, and Bruen in 2022 gave it a test grounded in history rather than interest balancing. Those decisions followed the approach conservatives have long urged: look to the text and how the Founding generation understood it.

The principle behind the right is older than the Constitution. People have a natural right to defend themselves, their families and their liberty. The Founders added to that a political purpose: an armed citizenry is a check on tyranny and a foundation for the militia. Whether one regards the second purpose as relevant today, the first is plain.

Disputes about the limits remain, from red-flag laws to magazine capacity to regulation of new technology. Rahimi shows the Court is willing to accept some limits drawn in keeping with historical analogues. Conservatives of good faith disagree about where they should lie, which is a reason to debate them in the open under the text's guidance.

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