The Parade With Rifles

A man belonged to an incorporated society of several hundred members that described its purpose as instruction in the laws, political economy, and military and gymnastic exercises. One December he led about 400 of its members through the streets of a large city. He rode on horseback carrying a cavalry sword, and the men carried rifles and drilled as they went. None of them held a licence from the governor. A state military code forbade any body of men, other than the organised militia or federal troops, from associating as a military company or drilling or parading with arms in a city without such a licence. The prosecution said the march broke that law. The man argued that the Second Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment and federal militia laws protected his group's right to march under arms.