In the 2008 Supreme Court opinion DC v. Heller, Justice John Paul Stevens writes a dissenting opinion where he claims the Second Amendment of the US Constitution was limited to protecting the right of the states to maintain state militias.
In support of this argument, he claims the founding fathers would have understood the phrase “bear arms” to be referring to military service:
The term “bear arms” is a familiar idiom; when used unadorned by any additional words, its meaning is “to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight.” 1 Oxford English Dictionary 634 (2d ed. 1989)
He goes on to cite a few sources using the term in that context in footnote 9 of his opinion.
I know Supreme Court Justices are sometimes called out for using bad history takes to support their opinions. I was just curious, is Justice Stevens right? When the founding fathers were drafting the Constitution, would they have thought the phrase “bear arms” simply meant to perform military service?
My earlier Oxford English Dictionary goes along with Stevens when he says "bear arms" means, essentially, fight. One of its citations is from 1769, William Robertson's history of the reign of Charles V.... " pardon...to all who had borne arms against him". I think it's also useful to note that a ceremonial sword in the Middle Ages was a "bearing sword", and one that knights carried to actually hack at people was an "arming sword". Arming implies a fight.
But the distinction between a rioting mob bearing arms or a disciplined military unit bearing arms is in the first part of the Second Amendment, "A well-regulated militia". The meaning of that has been discussed here before, by u/PartyMoses over here