The United States is known for its technological advances in the firearms industry, which began with gunpowder weapons like muskets brought to the Americas in the days of explorer Christopher Columbus, developing to fully automatic weapons and the AR-15 platform today. Firearms technology thrived in the U.S. unlike other countries in large part due to a strong right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment. The Founding Fathers viewed an armed citizenry as a safeguard against tyranny.
The phrase “the right of the people” in the Second Amendment referred to an individual right, not limited to militia service. At the Virginia Ratifying Convention for the Constitution in 1788, Founder George Mason, a key figure in drafting the Bill of Rights, declared, “Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” The Founders used “the people” elsewhere in the Bill of Rights to denote individual rights.
After the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the 1792 Militia Acts required citizens to arm themselves for militia service. Over the years, courts whittled down the Second Amendment in various decisions until 2008. That year, the Supreme Court clarified in District of Columbia v. Heller that there was an individual right to bear arms for self-defense. The court struck down Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and a requirement that firearms in the home be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger-locked, ruling these restrictions unconstitutional.
The court expanded this decision in 2022 with New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. The ruling established a new test for evaluating gun laws: restrictions must be consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation, rejecting the two-step balancing test used by lower courts that considered both history and government interest.
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