“No other country has a constitutional right” like the Second Amendment.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., during a speech April 25 to the National Rifle Association
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., went all in for gun owners in a speech to the National Rifle Association as the potential presidential candidate sought to squelch any doubts about his commitment to gun rights.
Rubio was one of a few 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls who spoke April 25 at the NRA’s convention in Indianapolis. He described the right to own a gun as part of the American Dream, highlighted the “futility” of existing gun laws and chastised the media for stigmatizing gun owners.
At one point, Rubio described the U.S. Constitution as unique.
“I’m always amused that those who come up to me and say no other country has a constitutional right like this,” he said. “As if to imply that there is something wrong with us. But we say no other country has a constitutional right like this not with scorn, but with pride.”
Is it correct that the United States is the only country that gives residents a constitutional right to bear arms?
The Second Amendment
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “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.”
We asked several legal experts whether the United States is the only such country that has a constitutional right to bear arms.
Tom Ginsburg, a University of Chicago international law professor and co-director of the Comparative Constitutions Project, has studied gun rights in national constitutions dating to 1789.
Only a minority of constitutions have ever included gun rights, and the number has dwindled, Ginsburg concluded in a 2013 article he wrote with Zachary Elkins, a University of Texas government professor. But Ginsburg added in an interview with PolitiFact that “the precise language in each constitution is different, and no other country has the ‘well-regulated militia’ language.”
Of the constitutions that do have an explicit right to bear arms, “ours is the only one that does not explicitly include a restrictive condition,” Elkins wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
The Constitutions Project zeroed in on two countries:
“We code only Mexico, Guatemala and the U.S. as having a right to bear arms,” Ginsburg told PolitiFact. While the constitutions of Haiti and Iran do mention guns, “the provision was too ambiguous for us to consider it a true right to bear arms.”
Here is how the Comparative Constitutions Project translates the right to own arms in Guatemala and Mexico:
- Guatemala Article 38: "The right to own weapons for personal use, not prohibited by the law, in the place of inhabitation, is recognized. There will not be an obligation to hand them over, except in cases ordered by a competent judge."
- Mexico Article 10: "The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have the right to possess arms in their residences for their protection and legitimate defense, except such as are expressly forbidden by law or which have been reserved for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard. Federal law will determine the circumstances, conditions, requirements, and places in which the bearing of arms by inhabitants will be authorized."
The authors of the article concluded that “the U.S. Constitution is alone in omitting any written conditions under which the government can regulate arms and munitions. In other countries, the right is typically limited to self-defense, either of the home or the state itself.”
They added that in the United States, the judicial branch has ruled that some restrictions on gun ownership are permissible — they just aren’t outlined in the Constitution itself.
“U.S. courts have allowed some exceptions to unconditional gun ownership in the form of local, state and federal statutes restricting ownership or possession of firearms,” the authors wrote. “In this way, the courts have served to render constitutional law somewhat less exceptional than the text itself would suggest.”
Other legal experts we consulted agreed that Mexican and Guatemalan constitutions come closest to the United States’, at least up to a point.
The NRA didn’t respond directly to our fact check.
One law professor also suggested we look at Switzerland. PolitiFact explained in a fact check in 2013 that the Swiss government requires nearly every able-bodied young male adult to serve in the citizen militia, where they are issued a military rifle. The guns are supposed to be for military use only, not for personal defense. Anyone who wants to keep the weapon after their years of service can do so if they can provide an acceptable reason; the gun is then refitted to limit its firepower.
Switzerland does not have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, said David Kopel, the research director at the Independence Institute and an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at Denver University
Our ruling
Rubio said during a speech to the NRA that “no other country has a constitutional right” like the Second Amendment.
Mexico and Guatemala have the right to bear arms in their constitutions. The Second Amendment is unique, however, because it is the only one that doesn’t include restrictive conditions within the constitutional language. We rate this claim Mostly True.
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