Indeed, if rejected language is any clue as to the meaning of that which was accepted, perhaps the most telling example was the Framers’ rejection of the following proposed amendment:“That each State respectively shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining its own militia, whensoever Congress shall omit or neglect to provide for the same. . . .” FIRST SENATE JOURNAL 126.This proposal stated, in unmistakably direct and concise fashion, exactly that meaning which Petitioners would divine in the Second Amendment through tortured linguistics, fanciful explanations, and “hidden history.” And it was rejected by the Framers. “[H]istory does not warrant concluding that it necessarily follows from the pairing of the concepts that a person has a right to bear arms solely in his function as a member of the militia.” Robert Sprecher, The Lost Amendment, 51 AM. BAR ASS’N J. 554, 557 (1965).11
If Petitioners’ derision of the individual right to arms as proposing treason or insurrection, Pet. Br. 15 n.3, questions the legitimacy of America’s Revolution, their view of the Second Amendment’s impact on the allocation of federal-state power would threaten the Union itself.Petitioners’ collective-purpose interpretation is also at odds with this Court’s only direct Second Amendment opinion in Miller. In examining whether Miller had a right to possess his sawed-off shotgun, this Court never asked whether Miller was part of any state-authorized military organization. “Had the lack of [militia] membership or engagement been a ground of the decision in Miller, the Court’s opinion would obviously have made mention of it. But it did not.” United States v. Emerson, 270 F.3d 203, 224 (5th Cir. 2001) (footnote omitted). Indeed, the government advanced the collectivist theory as its first argument in Miller, PA40a, but the Court ignored it. The Court asked only whether the gun at issue was of a type Miller would be constitutionally privileged in possessing.