CFIF Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Preserve the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

In its ongoing efforts to protect rights explicitly granted by the United States Constitution, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) this week filed an Amicus Curiae brief before the United States Supreme Court in the much-anticipated case District of Columbia, et al. v. Heller, commonly referred to as "the D.C. gun ban case." Read more from CFIF media release:

"The Bill of Rights is almost entirely a declaration of individual rights held by 'the people,' and that term is used throughout the Constitution to confer rights upon individual citizens," said Timothy Lee, CFIF's Director of Legal and Public Affairs. "As our brief points out, one cannot assert with a straight face that these Amendments somehow protect collective, governmental rights, as opposed to individual rights. In fact, the Second Amendment unequivocally states that, '... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'" ...

Contrary to popular myth and gun control advocates' common assertions, the United States Supreme Court has never held that the Second Amendment confers only a collective right to keep and bear arms, nor has it somehow rejected an individual right interpretation. Rather, in the 1939 case United States v. Miller, which gun-control advocates commonly cite, the Supreme Court merely held that the defendants had failed to appear before the Court at oral argument or present evidence in their defense. As a consequence, held the Court, it was simply unable to determine whether the defendants' weapons were protected by the Second Amendment. Accordingly, the Supreme Court left unanswered the question of what rights are conferred by the Second Amendment.