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The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “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.”
Over many decades, people have argued whether the Second Amendment is an individual right or a collective right – meaning limited to people in organized government military or law-enforcement groups.
In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment is an individual right and struck down the Washington, D.C., ban on handguns. Suddenly, the same people who, for years, had insisted the Second Amendment was universally a collective right changed their tune – taking the position that the Second Amendment only applies for “federal enclaves” such as the District of Columbia and does not apply to the 50 states.
The current argument by the gun control side is that the Second Amendment has never been incorporated through the 14th Amendment to include state governments.
A gun ban in Chicago was upheld by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June. According to the appeals court, the Second Amendment guaranteeing the individual right to bear arms is not an adequate basis for lawsuits attacking local gun ordinances.
That decision has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear MacDonald v. Chicago, which will likely determine whether the Second Amendment applies to the states.
I am not a constitutional legal scholar, so I am incapable of the linguistic acrobatic contortions necessary to answer profound legal questions such as what the definition of “is” is, but it does seem the Second Amendment aside, a state’s constitution certainly applies to that state.
Forty-four of the 50 states have Second Amendment language in their constitutions, while six states’ constitutions are silent on the subject.
Thirty-three states specifically reference an individual right, and the remaining 11 states have language either identical to the Second Amendment or similar. No state makes any distinction of a collective right.
Most interesting is that the Illinois constitution says, “the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
So the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether the individual right confirmed in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applies in the state of Illinois, when Illinois already specifies the individual right to keep and bear arms in its constitution. Strange, indeed.
One never knows what decisions will come from the U.S. Supreme Court, but, given its decision in the Heller case, it seems likely the court will decide the individual right to keep and bear arms confirmed by the Second Amendment extends to the 50 states.
