Capitol Hill Blue Forums Capitol Hill Blue Opinions CHB Columnists Time for serious control of guns and those who promote their sale, illegal use

...Some scholars point to the prefatory language "a well regulated Militia" to argue that the Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state's right to self-defense. Scholars call this theory "the collective rights theory." A collective rights theory of the Second Amendment asserts that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns and that local, state, and federal legislative bodies therefore possess the authority to regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right.

In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court considered the matter in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174. There, the Court adopted a collective rights approach, determining that Congress could regulate a sawed-off shotgun which moved in interstate commerce under the National Firearms Act of 1934 because the evidence did not suggest that the shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia . . . ." The Court then explained that the Framers included the Second Amendment to ensure the effectiveness of the military.

This precedent stood for nearly 70 years until 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, 478 F.3d 370.