U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)

U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876) was the first case involving the Second Amendment to reach the Supreme Court. It involved a massacre in Colfax, Louisiana where an armed mob of whites killed over 100 African Americans. The ringleaders, members of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan, had been indicted for 32 counts of conspiring to deny African Americans the right to assemble, vote, as well as “the 'right to keep and bear arms for a lawful purpose.’”



In Cruikshank, the Court acknowledged the right to keep and bear arms, and explained that the right was older than the Constitution. “The right there specified is that of 'bearing arms for a lawful purpose.' This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.”


However, the Court declined to force Louisiana to protect that right to keep and bear arms, because the Bill of Rights only served to limit the actions of the federal government and not the state government. Although the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted many times since its passage to apply parts of the Bill of Rights to actions of state governments, Cruikshank did not make this determination. In fact, the Second Amendment remains one of the few portions of the Bill of Rights that the Supreme Court has not applied (or “incorporated”) to state governments ^[1]

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1. ^ http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/teach/freeResources/Lessons/?action=showDetails&id=84&ref=showCatD&catId=7