Second Amendment collective rights

The court went on to reiterate the common themes of the Second Amendment being a collective, not an individual, guarantee and that the common law has long recognized the right of the state to regulate the details of weapon ownership and use. 

Arms in State Constitutions. UCLA School of Law. Available online. URL http //www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/volokh/2amteach/sources.htm. Updated on July 7, 1999. Collection of texts, cases, and commentaries relating to the Second Amendment, including provisions in state constitutions and bills of rights. An interesting inclusion is state provisions that are grammatically similar to the Second Amendment in that they have an introductory clause, but that they also refer to such provisions as the freedoms of speech and expression. 

Halbrook, Stephen P. Target Switzerland Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II. Rockville Centre, N.Y. Sarpedon, 1998. Argues that Switzerland s armed neutrality during World War II was made possible by its decentralized federal system and its unique system of citizen soldier militia. Although the book does not focus on gun rights, the relationship of the Swiss system to the U.S. Second Amendment and collective self-defense makes this book relevant to the gun debate. 

In the last few decades, courts and commentators have offered what may fairly be characterized as three different basic interpretations of the Second Amendment. The first is that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals rather, it merely recognizes the right of a state to arm its militia. This states rights or collective rights interpretation of the Second Amendment has been embraced by several of our sister circuits. The government commended the states rights view of the Second Amendment to the district court, urging that the Second Amendment does not apply to individual citizens. 

The government s brief thereafter makes essentially two legal arguments. First, it contends that the right secured by the Second Amendment is only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state. Id. at 15. This, in essence, is the sophisticated collective rights model. 

We turn now to the Second Amendment s preamble A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State. And, we ask ourselves whether this preamble suffices to mandate what would be an otherwise implausible collective rights or sophisticated collective rights interpretation of the amendment. We conclude that it does not. 

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