Amici therefore set out below the right to have and use arms in English law by the time of the Founding. Amici then show how early American authorities claimed and extended that right, including in interpreting the Second Amendment. The English right was a right of individuals, not conditioned on militia service; individuals might exercise the right collectively, but the unquestioned core was a broadly applicable and robust right to “keep” firearms in one’s home for self-defense. Even the “well recognized exceptions” confirmed this core right, by focusing on the carrying, not the keeping, of weapons. That core right is what the District of Columbia tramples. It bans keeping a handgun in one’s home (including use there in self-defense) and keeping any functional firearm in one’s home.
C. Kevin Marshall
February 8, 2008
Brief of the Cato Institute and history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm as amici curiae in support of respondent.
[Only five more days until oral arguments.
This brief makes it very clear the individual right to keep and bear arms was universally agreed upon, not only in America, but in England at the time of the writing of the 2nd Amendment. It is not a recent “invention” by the Apex of The Triangle of Death.–Joe]
That we should have to debate this at all is a stinging indictment of our education establishment.