The Second Amendment means what it says

The Georgia State Supreme Court was most vigorous in taking the Second Amendment literally rather than trying to twist the words to mean something other than what it actually says:

[When] did any legislative body in the Union have the right to deny to its citizens the privilege of keeping and bearing arms in defence of themselves and their country?

. . . [T]his is one of the fundamental principles, upon which rests the great fabric of civil liberty, reared by the fathers of the Revolution and of the country. And the Constitution of the United States, in declaring that the right of the people to keep and bear arms, should not be infringed, only reiterated a truth announced a century before, in the act of 1689, “to extend and secure the rights and liberties of English subjects”–Whether living 3,000 or 300 miles from the royal palace.

The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, re-established by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta! And Lexington, Concord, Camden, River Raisin, Sandusky, and the laurel-crowned field of New Orleans plead eloquently for this interpretation!

Unfortunately this was a 1846 case which makes it difficult to find and quote in present day cases and likely to be disregarded even though the Second Amendment hasn’t changed in the past two centuries.

Found via Gun Law News.

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