The Second Amendment

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.

What It Says

The right of the people to own and carry weapons cannot be infringed. The opening clause states the reason: an armed citizenry is what makes a free state secure.

What It Protects Against

A disarmed population facing a standing army. The founders had watched British forces attempt to seize colonial powder stores at Concord, and they viewed a professional standing army combined with a disarmed public as the standard mechanism by which republics become something else.

Sourced to a ratification-era document. See Contemporaneous Defense below.

Problem Addressed

British attempts to seize colonial arms and powder stores, including the expedition to Concord in April 1775, made disarmament a concrete grievance rather than a theoretical one.

Contemporaneous Defense

Federalist No. 46 argued that a federal standing army would be checked by a citizenry numbering in the millions and bearing arms, a circumstance Madison contrasted with European governments that were afraid to trust their people with weapons. Federalist No. 29 addressed the militia directly. Tench Coxe, writing in the Pennsylvania Gazette in February 1788, described the arms of the people as the birthright of an American.