Does an American citizen have a Constitutional right to own a gun The right of the people? A well-regulated militia? What do these mean? What does the Second Amendment say? Is gun ownership a right for all Americans? Or just for a small militia? Eugene Volokh , Professor of Law at UCLA, explains what the Founding Fathers intended. Does an American citizen have a Constitutional right to own a gun? Here’s what 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.” Now, it once seemed to me like that language only protected state militias and not individuals. Indeed, this is the view held by the four dissenting Supreme Court justices in the 2008 case of District of Columbia versus Heller, a landmark case dealing with gun ownership. But the more research I did, the more I came to realize that my initial view was mistaken and that the Founders were, in fact, se