The Second Amendment Right Extends Outside The Home

The Second Amendment Right Extends Outside The Home

The Second Amendment Right Extends Outside The Home, Pt 1

The Second Amendment right extends outside the home. Some observers speculate that the right to keep and bear arms might mean inside one’s home only. Examination of the landmark Supreme Court case, D.C. v  Heller shows this assumption to be incorrect.

Restricting gun possession outside of the home is clear violation of the Second Amendment and intent of the protected right to keep and bear arms guaranteed in the Constitution at the time of ratification. Constitutional rights are supposed to be understood by common people – not requiring primary education, plus a 4-year college degree, a 3-year law degree and years of professional experience interpreting case-law to understand your pre-existing rights that areprotected by the Constitution. Obtuse lawyers, analysts and so-called ‘pundits’ seem to miss the forest for the trees. There’s a reason for this: they look at what a particular case actually ruled on, and the Supreme Court only ruled on a very specific question – ‘is a law that prohibits gun possession in one’s home constitutional?’. The Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v Heller that it is not constitutional. Ergo, some short-sighted commentators take that to mean that the Court has “been silent” on the question of whether gun possession outside of the home is protected under the Second Amendment.

Not so fast.

The Court provided in-depth reasoning as to why the law was invalid, defining every one of the 27 words that comprise the Second Amendment, explaining the words meaning at the time of ratification, the legal history of the right to keep and bear arm from England to Colonial America, and how it was viewed after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution through the post-Civil War era. From this thorough examination, we can clearly see the absurdity of the supposition that the Second Amendment only means you can keep a gun in your home because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller. At no point in Heller did the Court say the Second Amendment only protected the right to keep and bear arms in the home. Let’s look at what the Court did say:

“Held: 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” (Syllabus, page 1).

Notice it says “for lawful purposes”, plural, and then says “such as self-defense within the home”. This means that self-defense within the home is one of several lawful purposes, not the sole lawful purpose for which the right to keep and bear arms is protected. Further, the Court explicitly mentions several other lawful purposes in Heller.

Though the Court says the Second Amendment is not dependent upon service in a militia or military unit (p.11-12), it is also clear that militia service is a protected lawful purpose. To be clear, this does not mean the National Guard, which didn’t exist as we know it today didn’t until 1903. The Court clearly states in Heller that the militia were (and still are under Federal law) all able-bodied males (p.23). It should be obvious that militia perform its duties outside of the home.

Hunting is a specifically mentioned lawful purpose in Heller: “most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting” (p. 26). Hunting, in virtually all cases, means outside of the home. One could not take seriously the idea that hunting is only lawful inside ones home. There is no suggestion in Heller that the Court implied this, only that D.C.’s unconstitutional law violated one of the Second Amendment’s lawful purposes.

The Court notes an additional three lawful protected purposes in discussing the meaning of the phrase ‘the security of a free state’, repelling invasion, suppressing insurrection and resisting tyranny: “it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections… when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny” (p.24-25). All listed lawfully protected purposes logically must involve citizens outside their home; repelling a foreign invader could not be done solely within one’s home, nor could suppressing an insurrection, or resisting government tyranny.

An objector may reason that these purposes aren’t necessities in the way they may have been at the time ratification. This is irrelevant, as the Court states: “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad” (p.63). At the time of adoption, this is how the right was understood and all are lawful purposes regardless of whether future generations would exercise the lawful purpose later. The fact remains they are lawful purposes, require the people to be outside of their homes, and therefore demonstrate the idea that the Second Amendment’s lawfully protects guns outside of the home by necessity.

We see from Heller itself that the Court lists multiple lawful purposes in plurality, not restricting the Second Amendment to a singular lawful purpose. The Court explicitly details at least five purposes that involve or require activity outside of the home. Therefore we can easily conclude the suggestion that the Court has – or could – rule that the only lawful purpose is gun possession for self-defense within a home is absurd, defying logic and reason as well as the explicitly written letter of the ruling.

 The Second Amendment Right Extends Outside The Home, Pt 2

The Second Amendment right extends outside the home. In part one, we examined five lawful purposes protected by the Second Amendment as laid out by the supreme Court in the landmark case, D.C. v Heller. Here in part two we take a look at further evidence that demonstrates the right of the people to keep and bear arms extends outside of the home.

In part one, we saw that the Court ruled the D.C. handgun ban violated one of many lawful purposes of the Second Amendment, “such as self-defense within the home” (emphasis added). We see further the Court lists at least five lawful purposes – hunting, militia duty, repelling a foreign invader, suppressing insurrection, and resisting tyranny – that involve or require activity outside of the home. We can conclude from this that the right to keep and bear arms cannot be restricted to simply keeping a gun in the home.

Here in part two, we expand upon the core lawful purpose, which the Court specified in Helleris self-defense: “the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right” (p.56). If one gets anything from the Heller decision, this must be it. The Court reiterated this finding in McDonald v Chicago in 2010, stating: “Two years ago, in District of Columbia v.Heller, this Court held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense” (Syllabus, p.1).

Self-defense can – and often does – involve a person outside of their home. Skeptics rely onreading into the Courts decision a limitation that the Court itself has not stated, postulating that “self-defense” might mean “self-defense… as long as you’re in your home; but nowhere else” because the Court struck down a law that prohibited guns in the home. But the Court itself did not specify this as the sole legitimate purpose, and this imagined limitation is artificially imposed in the minds of those that wish to limit others right to keep and bear arms protected by the Constitution.

The Court’s ruling in Heller sheds light on this. To recap, the Court thoroughly examines every word of the Second Amendment, defining it in historical context, legal precedent, and explaining how the right to keep and bear arms was viewed from English law to Colonial law, to the formation of the United States, post-ratification of the U.S. Constitution, through the post-Civil War era. It is clear from the historical documentation the people understood the right to keep and bear arms as part of the “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation” and “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense” (p.20). “They understood the right to enable individuals to defend themselves. Americans understood the “right of self-preservation” as permitting a citizen to “repe[l] force by force” when “the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury” (p. 21). The Court notes that “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad” (p. 63). This means that understanding how the right to keep and bear arms at the time of ratification is critical to understanding what is protected in the Second Amendment today. There is no logical reason to conclude self-defense is limited solely inside one’s home, or that “self-preservation”, “repelling force with force”, or defending oneself suddenly stops because one is outside of the home.

Relevant to our understanding is the Court’s historical definition of what “keep” and “bear” meant. Keeping arms means to carry or have in one’s possession. “Keep arms” was simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for militiamen and everyone else.” (p.9) The Court states: “the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons”” (p.8). “Bear arms” is synonymous with “carry arms”, “possess arms” and “have arms” (p. 14). “At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose — confrontation” (p.10). The Court says through examining historical source material, “In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia” (p.11). In Heller, the Court concurs with its prior definition from Muscarello v. United States, “in the course of analyzing the meaning of “carries a firearm” that “[s]urely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment . . . indicate[s]: ‘wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person” (p.10).

We can see that within the core lawful purpose of the Second Amendment of self-defense the terminology means to keep arms on one’s person in case of confrontation and the need to defend oneself. To suggest the right to self-preservation or self-defense in the face of confrontation and potential bodily harm is limited solely to the home is absurd. The common person’s understanding of their protected right of self-preservation logically extends outside the home. This is also consistent with the five previously covered lawful protected purposes that involve or require activity outside the home.