Virginia's Constitutional Right to Bear Arms

In addition to the Second Amendment at the Federal level, Virginia itself has a constitutional right to bear arms. It is even clearer and more explicit than the Federal Constitution's.

Article I. Bill of Rights
Section 13. Militia; standing armies; military subordinate to civil power
That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

There is quite a bit of scholarship on this particular clause. Even before the adoption of the Virginia constitution, colonial-era laws had mandated that each home keep arms and a stock of ammunition at all times. At the time of the adoption of the Federal constitution, the exact meaning of the term 'militia' was described by George Mason and Federalist 46. Patrick Henry said that "the great object is that every man be armed."

That is not to say that no restrictions on arms were ever considered even in the old days. Before the Civil War, Virginia did prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons -- but also the keeping or carrying of any sort of weapons by slaves. Even after the Civil War, blacks in Virginia could only carry arms with a license from the state, just because they were considered too dangerous to be allowed unfettered access to the right. Cf. George Mason's comments that to disarm a man was the best way to make it easy to enslave him; so too the actual slaveowners, and those who had but late been slaveowners, did their best to keep their slaves and former slaves disarmed.

It will be interesting to observe how much attention is paid to the constitutional limits by the legislature in the next session, or by the governor thereafter. Should the government violate its constitution, I would argue that there is a fundamental duty on the citizenry to disobey such laws, and to refuse to enforce them when called as jurors.