"The Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud,' on the American public," former chief justice Warren E. Burger said in a 1991 interview on PBS's "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour." Burger has said often that the "right to bear arms" belongs to the states, and he has attacked the NRA for fostering the opposite view.
The Second Amendment says, "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."
The widespread legal and judicial view is that the Second Amendment guarantees a state's right to be armed – for example, in today's National Guard.
When the Supreme Court has spoken in this area – and it has done so infrequently – it has begun with the idea that the Second Amendment protects a state's right to keep arms for a militia. In a nationally watched 1983 case, the justices let the town of Morton Grove, Ill., ban handguns. Without comment or dissent, they left intact a lower court decision rejecting the contention that Americans have a constitutional right to be armed.
In that case, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Second Amendment restricts federal authority in this area, not that of state and local governments. The court stated, "We conclude that the right to keep and bear handguns is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment."