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Right to keep and bear arms in the United States


The right to keep and bear arms in the United States is a fundamental right protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, and by the constitutions of most U.S. states. The Second Amendment declares:

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.

In the United States, which has an English common law tradition, the concept of a right to keep and bear arms was recognized prior to the creation of a written national constitution. When colonists in the Thirteen Colonies rebelled against British control during the American Revolution they cited the 1689 English Bill of Rights as an example.

The American understanding of the right to keep and bear arms was influenced by the 1689 English Bill of Rights, an Act of Parliament, which also dealt with personal defence by Protestant English subjects.

The Bill of Rights did not create a new right to have arms but rather rescinded and deplored acts of the deposed King James II, a Roman Catholic, who had forced the disarming of Protestants, while arming and deploying armed Catholics contrary to Law (among other alleged violations of individual rights). The Bill of Rights provided that Protestants could bear arms for their defence as permitted by law. It also established that the power to regulate the right to bear arms belonged to Parliament, not the monarch.


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