While the nine Supreme Court Justices in D.C. v. Heller disagreed on how the right to keep and bear arms, protected by the Second Amendment, could be limited, all nine of them agreed that the right was one held by individuals, not “the militia”. This is held out by their opinions and dissents.
To begin with, the Opinion of the Court was signed by Justices Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, indicating that they agreed with the following statements:
Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.
…
There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Moving on, Justice Stevens wrote a dissent to which Justices Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer added their signatures:
The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a “collective right” or an “individual right.” Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals.
Finally, Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsberg also signed Justice Breyer’s additional dissent:
In interpreting and applying this Amendment, I take as a starting point the following four propositions, based on our precedent and today’s opinions, to which I believe the entire Court subscribes:
(1) The Amendment protects an “individual” right—i.e., one that is separately possessed, and may be separately enforced, by each person on whom it is conferred. See, e.g., ante, at 22 (opinion of the Court); ante, at 1 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
Put simply, not even the Supreme Court Justices who agreed with “gun control” extremists about D.C.’s draconian gun laws were willing to sign on to the wholly spurious, historically-unsupported, recently-fabricated notion that the Second Amendment exclusively protects a right in relation to a “militia”.
The more you learn about how poorly supported the “gun control” position is, the more you start to understand why the people in the anti-rights movement are almost invariably so bitter, antagonistic, and hateful. It has to wear on a person to be proven wrong at every turn.
One wonders why they simply do not accept reality and move on with their lives, happier and healthier for it.
