liberties; and therefore, to guard most effectually against such consequences, and enable the militia to discharge this most important trust, so reposed in them, and for this purpose only, it is conceived the right to keep and bear arms was retained, and the power which, without such reservation, would have been vested in the government, to prohibit, by law, their keeping and bearing arms for any purpose whatever, was so far limited or withdrawn: which conclusion derives additional support from the well known fact, that the practice of maintaining a large standing army in times of peace, had been denounced and repudiated by the people of the United States, as an institution dangerous to civil liberty and a free State, which produced, at once, the necessity of providing some adequate means for the security and defence of the State, more congenial to civil liberty and republican government. And it is confidently believed that the people designed and expected to accomplish this object, by the adoption of the article under consideration, which would forever invest them with a legal right to keep and bear arms for that purpose; but it surely was not or designed to operate as an immunity to those, who should so keep bear their arms as to injure or endanger the private rights of others, or in any manner prejudice the common interests of society.
The court of appeals of the State of Kentucky, in the case of Bliss vs. the Commonwealth, 2 Littell, 90, and the argument of this case for the appellee, if I have not misapprehended their premises and reasoning, both assume that the right to keep and bear arms was adopted as well for the purpose of enabling individuals to defend and redress, by their own arms, injuries threatened or suffered in respect to their personal or private rights, as for the security of the State, and is not subject to any legal regulation, restriction, or control whatever; and that, by virtue of it, every person in the community possesses a privilege or immunity, by virtue of which he may keep and bear arms of every description, at all times, in every place, and in any manner, according to his own free will or caprice.
However captivating such arguments may appear upon a merely casual or superficial view of the subject, they are believed to be specious; and to rest upon premises at variance with all the fundamental principles upon which the government is based; and that, upon a more
