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The Founders considered arms rights to be “natural rights” that always belonged to all people, including themselves as British subjects, and were in no way dependent on the existence of specific entities known as “states” or “state militias”—to believe in “collective right” is to believe that the Founders wanted American citizens to have fewer rights than they had prior to gaining independence. The following handful of statements, most of which also appear in one of the designated “quote” categories, emphasize this specific point.

John Adams, 12/4/1770

“[English legal scholar William Hawkins says,] ‘And so perhaps the killing of dangerous rioters, may be justified by any private persons, who cannot otherwise suppress them, or defend themselves from them; in as much as every private person seems to be authorized by the law, to arm himself for the purposes aforesaid’…Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defence.”​

John Cartwright, 1799

“To bear arms is A RIGHT OF NATURE for self-defence, of which no human power (except tyrannically) can divest us…As every nation has the inherent right of arms-bearing, on the eternal principle of self-defence; and as the rights of a nation are nothing more than the aggregate of the inherent rights of individuals, so arms-bearing must necessarily be a right common to nations and to man.”

 

“To BEAR ARMS, means, 1st, to possess and use arms, whether it be as a professional soldier, or as a private citizen. And, TO TAKE UP ARMS, means, to make war…Now, it will readily be granted, that no Englishman can legally make war, go to war, or resort to arms for the purposes of war, without the assent and authority of the executive government; but that no Englishman is to possess and use arms, without such assent and authority, is so contrary to the whole stream of the common law, to the spirit of the constitution, to the right of nature, and to reason, that it is astonishing any man can have effrontery enough to affirm it.”

 

Cartwright was a British naval officer and politician, one of the earliest supporters of American independence and an abolitionist who corresponded with Jefferson and Madison.

Supreme Court of Georgia, 7/1/1846

“When, I would ask, did any legislative body in the Union have the right to deny to its citizens the privilege of keeping and bearing arms in defence of themselves and their country? If this right, ‘inestimable to freemen,’ has been guaranteed to British subjects, since the abdication and flight of the last of the Stuarts and the ascension of the Prince of Orange, did it not belong to our colonial ancestors in this western hemisphere?...This is one of the fundamental principles, upon which rests the great fabric of civil liberty, reared by the fathers of the Revolution and of the country. And the Constitution of the United States, in declaring that the right of the people to keep and bear arms, should not be infringed, only reiterated a truth announced a century before.”

Francis Lieber, 1853
“Akin to the last-mentioned guarantee, is that which secures to every citizen the right of possessing and bearing arms. Our constitution says: ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon;’ and the [English] Bill of Rights secured this right to every Protestant. It extends now to every English subject.”
 
Lieber was a Professor of History and Political Science at Columbia University who advised the Union in the Civil War and whose writings form the basis of the modern laws of war.
Charles Ingersoll, 1864
“The word ‘right’ means legal moral power. It is so used in the Articles of Constitution, for instance, in the recognition of the right to keep arms. This is a right, not conferred or granted thereby, but recognized as pre-existing and inherent…As is also the case with regard to the other rights, [it] appears to be recognized as personal, not pertaining to the State, but to each individual thereof.”
 
Ingersoll was the son of US Rep. Charles J. Ingersoll.
US Supreme Court, 10/1875
“The right there specified…is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent on that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed [by Congress].”
Sen. Samuel B. Maxey, 4/21/1879
“The second amendment to the Constitution…is not an inhibition upon the States, or in any wise a right granted the people, for the rights of the people to keep and bear arms were possessed before the adoption of the Constitution; it is an absolute prohibition upon the Federal Government to interfere in any wise whatever with the inalienable, unparted-with right of the people to keep and bear arms in any way or manner whatever that they may see proper.” (p. 600, middle of 1st col.)
Constitutional Legislation in the United States, 1891
“The right to bear arms has always been the distinctive privilege of freemen…It was not necessary that the right to bear arms should be granted in the Constitution, for it had always existed.”
Sen. William E. Chandler (NH), 4/14/1896
“‘Article I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [etc.]’ I ask the Senator from Delaware whether, prior to the adoption of that article, Congress had any right to make a law respecting the establishment of religion [etc.]?
 
‘Article II. 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.’ Does that prove that before Article II was adopted Congress might prevent the people from keeping and bearing arms?
 
…could all those things have been done if those amendments to the constitution had not been adopted? I answer by saying that they could not have been done and that very few people believed that these clauses were necessary.” (p. 3953, top of 1st col.)
Hon. Stephen Johnson Field, 6/23/1896
“As said by counsel for the appellant: ‘The freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press; the right to bear arms; [etc.]…are, together with exemption from self-crimination, the essential and inseparable features of English liberty.’”
 
Justice Field was appointed to the US Supreme Court by Pres. Lincoln in large part due to “his staunch support of the Union cause.”
US Supreme Court, 1/25/1897
“The law is perfectly well settled that the first 10 amendments to the constitution, commonly known as the ‘Bill of Rights,’ were not intended to lay down any novel principles of government, but simply to embody certain guarantees and immunities which we had inherited from our English ancestors.”
Laura Donnan, 1900
“As Englishmen [the Founders’] forefathers had forced from the king the right to keep and bear arms, and as Americans they claimed that this right must be secured to them in the organic law of this nation. This clause does not mean that only organized state militia may keep and bear arms, but it means that every citizen may do so. To keep and bear arms means not only to have them, but to have them and to be able to handle them.”
 
Donnan was a noted educator and civil rights activist.
Corpus Juris, 1934
“The right to keep and bear arms…is sometimes said, occasionally in the constitution itself, to be an inherent and inalienable right, existing independently of the various constitutional guarantees thereof...The right guaranteed is not to bear arms upon all occasions and in all places, but to use them in a way that is usual, or to keep them for defense of himself, his property, and the state.”
Hon. William J. Brennan, Jr. and Hon. Thurgood Marshall, 2/28/1990
“Whereas the British Parliament was unconstrained, the Framers intended to create a Government of limited powers...Thus, the Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to ‘create’ rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be pre-existing.”
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