Bill of Rights · 2nd Amendment
Second Amendment
Ratified December 15, 1791
Verbatim
Exact text as ratified.
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.
Plain English
A translation that drops archaic words but keeps the meaning, including the parts courts still argue about.
A well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
What this means for you
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms. That has been the Supreme Court's holding since 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller settled the question. Before 2008, lower courts more often read the amendment as protecting only a collective right tied to militia service. The current law is the individual-right reading.
That right is not unlimited. The Supreme Court has said the government can ban felons and people with serious mental illness from owning guns, prohibit guns in sensitive places like schools and government buildings, and regulate the sale of firearms. The exact line between protected and prohibited is one of the most actively litigated questions in American law right now. Every year courts decide new cases about specific weapons, specific people, and specific places.
Federal law sets a baseline. State and local law can be more restrictive in some places and less in others. Arizona has different rules than New York, which has different rules than Texas. If you want to know what is legal where you live, the federal Constitution is the floor, not the ceiling. Your state and city can and do add their own rules.
About
The Second Amendment was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. Its grammatical structure has made it one of the most analyzed sentences in American law. The opening clause ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State") is what grammarians call an absolute construction. It provides context for what follows but does not grammatically condition it. The main clause ("the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed") is what the amendment actually does.
For most of the 20th century, federal courts read the militia clause as limiting the right, meaning the right primarily protected militia-related arms-bearing. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that the right is an individual one, not contingent on militia service. McDonald v. Chicago (2010) extended this reading to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) further developed the standards courts use to evaluate gun regulations.
The textual debate continues among legal scholars even though the Court has settled the doctrinal question. The amendment's exact scope — what counts as "Arms," who counts as "the people," what counts as "infringement" — is litigated constantly. New cases reach the Supreme Court every few years, and the answers continue to evolve.