The Positive Second Amendment

Joseph Blocher is Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law. As an associate at O'Melveny & Myers LLP, he co-authored the briefs for the District of Columbia in District of Columbia v. Heller. His Second Amendment scholarship has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, NYU Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and many other journals. Darrell A. H. Miller is the Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Oxford University and is a former Marshall Scholar. His scholarship has been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals, the United States District Courts, and in congressional testimony and legal briefs.

• Introduction: the gun debate and the Constitution; 1. Gun rights and regulation in American history; 2. Militias, private purposes, and the road to Heller; 3. Understanding Heller; 4. Heller's aftermath: 'a vast Terra Incognita'; 5. The constitutional grammar of the Second Amendment; 6. What is the Second Amendment for?; 7. Second Amendment law and the gun debate.

'Does the Second Amendment protect a right to carry stun guns? Does it allow state lawmakers to proscribe the carrying of concealed firearms by visitors holding concealed-carry licenses from other states? In the decade since the Supreme Court found an individual constitutional right to possess firearms for personal protection in the Heller case, lower courts have been grappling with the ruling's myriad implications. The Positive Second Amendment describes the resulting body of law. Like the Heller decision itself, that body of law does not establish an absolute right. In this engaging tour of the legal landscape, Joseph Blocher and Darrell Miller remind readers that the legal Second Amendment affords citizens considerable room to argue over the appropriate dimensions of federal, state, and local gun-control law and policy.' Michael C. Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School, New York