The contemporary debate over firearms rights in the United States often presumes that the Second Amendment confers a negative right, prohibiting the state from disarming citizens.
Yet negative-liberty framing tells only part of the story. Underlying the jurisprudential debates in District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen lies a deeper moral question: whether there is a positive moral right to keep and bear arms, one that entails not merely the absence of interference but the presence of enabling conditions necessary for meaningful self-defense.
I will argue here that there is such a positive moral right. Rooted in the fundamental right to life and bodily integrity, the permissibility of defensive force, and republican notions of non-domination, the moral claim to keep and bear firearms is not exhausted by a minimalist libertarian account. It imposes correlative obligations on the state, on communities, and on individual right-holders.
By Alan Chwick, Joanne D Eisen & Gary Mauser
