Words, Deeds, and Guns: "Arming America" and the Second Amendment

Abstract

reached the Supreme Court since Hitler invaded Poland, its twenty-seven words are now among the most familiar passages of the Constitution. 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. The familiarity of this text is, perhaps perversely, a function of the fact that the justices, in their wisdom or discretion, have not revisited their holding in the strange case of United States v. Miller, in which two gangsters unsuccessfully invoked the Second Amendment in order to avoid prosecution for illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun.1 Those Americans who now believe that ongoing efforts to regulate firearms in the interest of public health mask an insidious design to confiscate private weapons in the pursuit of future tyranny are eager to see the Miller decision reviewed and reversed. That belief underlies the