As a country with a revolutionary tradition, the United States has always considered the right to own and carry firearms as implicit in the success of the American Revolution, and in the right and ability of all Americans to protect their property. This was implicit in the Declaration of Independence, in particular in Thomas Jefferson’s ungenerous references to the Native people. This helped give to American conservatism the character of individualism, of the rugged citizen, practically completely independent of the state, and in some respects, suspicious of it; patriotic and participating in political life, but above all in a society of individuals. The unallocated powers clause of the Bill of Rights, attached to the constitution at its outset, holds that powers not accorded the federal government belong to the states or the people, to individual citizens themselves.
