THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR GUN OUTSIDE: A SNAPSHOT HISTORY

Two landmark Supreme Court rulings affirming the right of the people “to keep and bear arms” have failed to halt the effort to thwart that Second Amendment guarantee.3 The Amendment refers to both keeping and bearing weapons.4 Before District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the District of Columbia’s (D.C.’s) ban on handguns in the home, those who insisted the right was limited to members of a state militia contrived to sidestep that pesky word “keep.” Their ploy was to simply omit “to keep[,]” referring instead to the “bear arms” clause, which they insisted had an exclusively military meaning.5 Indeed, Justice Stevens, in his dissent in Heller, denied that “keep” is synonymous with the word “have,” claiming it is part of the idiom “keep and bear,” and concluded therefore the word has no independent significance.6 After Heller overturned the D.C. ban on residents keeping a gun in their home, those opposed to the individual right to keep and bear arms were forced to concede a constitutional right to “keep” a gun. Now they are intent on denying the right to bear that gun outside the home, abandoning all reference to the “bear arms” clause.”7 Because the D.C. ban was confined to keeping a gun in the home, they now deny “the right to bear” a gun outside the home.