Gun Owners' Next Victory in D.C. | Robert A. Levy | Cato Institute: Commentary

Gun Owners' Next Victory in D.C. | Robert A. Levy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Does the Constitution mandate that the nation's capital allow firearms to be carried outside the home? The right to bear arms, the court said in Heller, is an 'individual right unconnected to militia service.' To 'bear' means to 'carry.' More specifically, when used with 'arms,' the opinion said, 'bear' means 'carrying for a particular purpose — confrontation.' Nothing in that formulation implies a right that can be exercised only within one's home.

Indeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, although she dissented in Heller, cited Black's Law Dictionary to suggest in a prior opinion that the Second Amendment entails a right to 'wear, bear, or carry ..... upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, ..... armed and ready ..... in a case of conflict with another person.' That language, says Michael O'Shea in the West Virginia Law Review, 'reads like a literal description of the practice of lawful concealed carry, as engaged in by millions of Americans in the forty-eight states that authorize the carrying of concealed handguns.'"