Elena Kagan on Gun Control

2nd Amendment confers individual right, not broad principle

KAGAN: I did not mean to suggest that all constitutional provisions fall into one of two categories--"very specific provisions" or "broad principles." Rather, I meant that different constitutional provisions contain language at different levels of generality, which present different interpretive issues. The issue in DC v. Heller was whether the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to bear arms or merely a collective right associated with militias. The Court considered both the language & the history of the 2nd Amendment in deciding that it conferred an individual right.