Kenneth Brown
Captain
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2003
- Messages
- 3,481
The Department of Justice says the Second Amendment's right to bear arms is an individual, not a collective, right.<br /><br />In an opinion written in August and titled "Memorandum Opinion for the Attorney General," the department released its findings on the Internet last week.<br /><br />The opinion examines the question, "Whether the Second Amendment Secures an Individual Right." The 103-page report comes with 437 footnotes and concludes definitively "the Second Amendment secures a personal right of individuals, not a collective right that may only be invoked by a State or a quasi-collective right restricted to those persons who serve in organized militia units."<br /><br />Some anti-gun groups had argued the right was a collective right reserved to states and state-run militia organizations, not to individuals.<br /><br />That latter opinion was also suggested by the Clinton administration's Justice Department, but was never enshrined in policy.<br /><br />According to the report's authors, their conclusions are based "on the Amendment's text, as commonly understood at the time of its adoption and interpreted in light of other provisions of the Constitution and the Amendment's historical antecedents."<br /><br />The report did not examine the "substance" of an individual's right to own and carry firearms, nor did it consider the legitimacy of government attempts to limit the right, CNSNews.com reported.<br /><br />Gun rights groups applauded the opinion but said until it was applied in court rulings to overturn some gun restrictions, it would not be enough to restore complete constitutionality regarding the issue.<br /><br />"It changes the courts' view of the issue, and it applies a stricter standard of scrutiny as to whether or not a given law does infringe on an individual's constitutional rights," Joe Waldron, executive of Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, told the news service. <br /><br />"They have to look at it from a civil rights perspective now instead of just [whether] the individual violated a given law," he said.