By David Hardy

Daniel B. Polsby is Kirkland Professor of Law at Northwestern University.His popular article, "Second Reading: Treating the Second Amendment as Normal Constitutional Law," appeared in Reason, Mar. 1996, at 34:

"There seem to be two main theories of the second amendment. ... But in places where close attention is paid to what the words actually say, the states-rights reading of the Second Amendment has attracted surprisingly little support. After all, the Second Amendment does not say 'A well regulated militia, being necessary to a free state, shall not be infringed.' Nor do the words of the amendment assert that the 'right of the people to keep and bear arms' is conditional upon membership in some sort of organized soldiery like the National Guard. Indeed, if there is conditional language in the Second Amendment at all, it runs the other way: "Because the people have a right to keep and bear arms, states will be assured of the well regulated militias that are necessary for their security. Some version of this reading is supported by almost all of the constitutional historians and lawyers who have published research on the subject. Indeed, this view is so dominant in the academy that Gary Wills, the lone dissenter among historians, has dubbed it the 'Standard Model' of the Second Amendment."