Author: Richard Coleman

Ten amendments were ratified together on December 15, 1791, and every amendment in the Bill of Rights is written as a restraint rather than as a grant, with a government and not a citizen as the party bound. Direction is the whole point.

Against Congress, in the first of the ten

The First Amendment names the body it binds in its own first word. The clause reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. The subject of that prohibition is a legislature.

Four of the ten name the party whose hands are tied: Congress in the First, a Soldier in the Third, a Court of the United States in the Seventh, and the United States in the Tenth, which reserves what was never delegated to it. The other six name no actor at all.

Congress proposed twelve articles on September 25, 1789, and ten of them were ratified two years later. Articles three through twelve are the ten that survived. The amendment opening on the word Congress was proposed as Article the third.

Through a prosecution, at each stage the text names

Four of the ten sit inside the criminal process. The Fourth reaches the search and the warrant. The Fifth reaches the charge, the compelled answer and the taking of property. The Sixth sets the terms of the trial, and the Eighth reaches bail, fines and punishment.

Every one of those verbs implies a public actor behind it. Warrants issue, a person is held to answer, bail is required, and none of that can be done by anyone outside an office. The text names no officer, and does not need to.

The Seventh is the civil counterpart, and it names its court outright. No fact tried by a jury, it says, “shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States”.

Beyond the enumerated rights, in the last two

The Ninth and the Tenth describe no right. The Ninth is an instruction about reading. The enumeration of certain rights, it says, “shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. The party restrained is whoever does the construing.

The Tenth is an accounting of power. Powers not delegated to the United States, and not prohibited by it to the States, are reserved “to the States respectively, or to the people”. Neither clause is a promise made to a person. Both tell an official body what it may not assume it holds. How much the Tenth adds is contested. In 1941 the Court called it “but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered” (United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124). Since 1992 the commandeering cases have read it as a limit Congress can run into. Congress, that line holds, “lacks the power directly to compel the States to require or prohibit” acts (New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 166). Printz v. United States extended that to a State’s own officers. Both readings address the same party.

The same test runs through all ten, and the National Archives transcript of the enrolled original is the printing every quotation below follows. The middle column below asks the same question of each of the ten: who is restrained.

Amendment	Who or what it restrains	The operative words, quoted
First	Congress, named in the opening word	“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble …”
Second	No actor is named; the clause is written in the passive	“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Third	A Soldier, in peace and in war; in peacetime the Owner’s consent is the condition	“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
Fourth	Whoever searches or seizes, and whoever issues a warrant; neither is named	“no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”
Fifth	Whoever holds a person to answer, tries them twice, compels testimony, or takes property	“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury”; “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”
Sixth	No actor is named; the clause confers the rights on the accused and leaves the party bound unnamed	“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed …”
Seventh	Any Court of the United States, named outright	“no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law”
Eighth	Whoever requires bail, imposes a fine or inflicts a punishment; none is named	“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Ninth	Whoever construes the Constitution	“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Tenth	The United States, which holds delegated powers only	“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Under the Fourteenth Amendment, in the words No State shall

On their own the ten run against the federal government and nothing else. The Supreme Court said so in 1833, in Barron’s takings claim against the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. These amendments, it held, “contain no expression indicating an intention to apply them to the state governments”. The Court added that it “cannot so apply them”. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, supplied words the first ten never had. Its first section turns to the States in its second sentence: “No State shall make or enforce any law”. Whether a clause of the first ten binds a State is a question put under that later text.

Between private parties, the amendments are silent

That structure answers a question people ask constantly. A private employer is not Congress. A neighbour is not a court. A company is not a State. None of the ten places a duty on any of them, because none of the ten is addressed to them, and the Fourteenth adds only “No State”. That is settled doctrine and not an inference. Of the Fourteenth Amendment the Supreme Court said in 1883 that “Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject-matter of the amendment”. For the ten, Barron settles it.

Protection against a private party comes from a different instrument. A statute, a contract, a condition of employment: each has its own text and its own reach. The phrase “protects you from” means from official action, and the narrowness is the doctrine’s own structure.

One limit sits on all of it. Who a clause is addressed to is settled by its words. What counts as an unreasonable search, or an excessive fine, is not. Those words open that question rather than closing it.

This is educational content explaining what each amendment says, not commentary on any pending legislation or litigation.

Congress did not use the ordinary meanings of these words. It wrote definitions of its own, in 18 U.S.C. § 921 and 26 U.S.C. § 5845, with one registration provision at 26 U.S.C. § 5841.

The statutory definition of a firearm reaches the frame or receiver by itself

Start with the term the rest of federal gun law hangs on. The definition at 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3) has four parts. The first is “any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive”. The second is “the frame or receiver of any such weapon”. The third and fourth are “any firearm muffler or firearm silencer” and “any destructive device”.

Subparagraph (B) is the part that surprises people. A frame or receiver is a firearm on its own, with nothing attached.

Subparagraph (C) reaches a component most people call by another name. The statute’s words are “firearm silencer” and “firearm muffler”. Section 921(a)(25) defines both as a device “for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm”. The same paragraph reaches “any combination of parts” intended for assembling one, and “any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication”. Everyday speech has settled on a third word.

Ordinary speech sorts guns into categories the statute never names. That gap is worked through in a separate piece on “assault rifle” and AR-15, and this piece leaves the pair there.

Under title 18, any gun made in or before 1898 falls outside the definition

The definition closes with one short sentence: “Such term does not include an antique firearm”. The definition it points at is § 921(a)(16).

Subparagraph (A) covers any firearm “manufactured in or before 1898”. It names matchlock, flintlock and percussion cap ignition among others. Subparagraph (B) covers replicas of those, on conditions about the ammunition a replica takes. Subparagraph (C) covers muzzle loading rifles, shotguns and pistols designed to use black powder or a black powder substitute. Those must also be unable to use fixed ammunition.

Subparagraph (C) then carves things back out of itself. It excludes any weapon incorporating a firearm frame or receiver. It excludes a firearm converted into a muzzle loading weapon.

One term, two titles, two texts. Title 26 defines “antique firearm” again, and more narrowly, at 26 U.S.C. § 5845(g). There the date of manufacture is not enough on its own. A gun designed for conventional centerfire fixed ammunition still counts, unless that ammunition is no longer made and is not readily available. A citation to one is not a citation to the other.

The design test does the work for rifle, shotgun and handgun

Three definitions share a formula. A rifle, under § 921(a)(7), is “designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder”. It is made “to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger”. A shotgun, under § 921(a)(5), repeats the shoulder language. The definition substitutes “a smooth bore” and “either a number of ball shot or a single projectile”.

The formula asks what the object was designed, made and intended to be. It does not ask what the object looks like.

A handgun sits on a different axis. Under § 921(a)(30) a handgun “has a short stock and is designed to be held and fired by the use of a single hand”. Subparagraph (B) adds “any combination of parts” from which such a firearm can be assembled. Check that paragraph number before you cite it. Section 921(a)(29) defines a different term, “semiautomatic rifle”.

The short-barreled categories are settled with a tape measure

Most legal tests ask for judgement. These two ask for a ruler. A short-barreled rifle, under § 921(a)(8), has “one or more barrels less than sixteen inches in length”. The same paragraph reaches a weapon made from a rifle whose overall length falls under twenty-six inches. A short-barreled shotgun, under § 921(a)(6), uses eighteen inches for the barrel and the same twenty-six overall.

Paragraphs (1) through (4) of 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a) set the same thresholds on the tax side. The measurement itself asks for no judgement, though the object has to be a rifle or a shotgun first, and those two definitions are the design-and-intent tests above. A threshold written as a number does not drift, and that is the reason for writing it that way.

The National Firearms Act uses the word firearm to mean eight specific things

Section 5845 opens “For the purpose of this chapter—” and then redefines a familiar word. Under § 5845(a) a firearm is one of eight things. Four are the short-barreled categories above. The other four are “any other weapon” as defined in subsection (e), a machinegun, a destructive device, and “any silencer (as defined in section 921 of title 18, United States Code)”. The subsection then excludes antique firearms, and devices other than machineguns and destructive devices that the Secretary finds are primarily collector’s items.

The tax statute writes no silencer definition of its own. It borrows the one in title 18. Amend § 921(a)(25) and § 5845(a)(7) moves with it.

Membership in that list is what attaches consequences. The registry provision, 26 U.S.C. § 5841(a), directs a “central registry of all firearms in the United States”. Firearms the United States possesses or controls are excluded. The word firearms there carries the § 5845(a) meaning, not the ordinary one. Under § 5841(b), manufacturers, importers and makers register what they make or import. A transferred firearm is registered to the transferee by the transferor.

Set the terms side by side. Some turn on design and intent. One lays a measurement on top of a design test. One turns on nothing but membership in a list.

Term	Statutory citation	What the definition turns on
Firearm	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3)	Expelling a projectile by the action of an explosive; also the frame or receiver, a muffler or silencer, and a destructive device
Antique firearm	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(16)	Manufacture in or before 1898; for replicas, the ammunition; for muzzle loaders, black powder and no fixed ammunition
Shotgun	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(5)	Designed, made and intended to be fired from the shoulder; a smooth bore
Rifle	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(7)	Designed, made and intended to be fired from the shoulder; a rifled bore; a single projectile
Handgun	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(30)	A short stock, and design to be held and fired by the use of a single hand
Short-barreled shotgun	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(6); 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a)(1)-(2)	Barrels under 18 inches; or, for a weapon made from a shotgun, overall length under 26 inches
Short-barreled rifle	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(8); 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a)(3)-(4)	Barrels under 16 inches; or, for a weapon made from a rifle, overall length under 26 inches
Firearm silencer, firearm muffler	18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(25)	Being a device for silencing, muffling or diminishing the report of a portable firearm
Firearm, in the NFA sense	26 U.S.C. § 5845(a)	Membership in an eight-item list, with antiques and collector’s items excluded

This is educational content explaining statutory terminology, not commentary on any pending legislation or litigation.