gun rights

Why are Medieval Weapons at the Center of a Supreme Court Case?

by Jennifer Tucker

The history and traditions of English law inform American judicial interpetation today, including efforts to discern the functional meaning of the Second Amendment. A group of historians has briefed the Court that restricting dangerous weapons in public is long-established. 

Was the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms Designed to Protect Slavery?

Randall Kennedy reviews Carol Anderson's "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America," and charges that Anderson overstates the influence of suppressing slave rebellion on the drafting of the Second Amendment. 

Restoring Civil Society by Executive Order?: An Inaugural Reverie

by John L. Godwin

Joe Biden should defend the First Amendment right to peaceable assembly by a temporary emergency order criminalizing the carrying of firearms at public protest events and make clear that the threat of force is not part of the democratic process.

The Gun-Rights Movement Fed America’s Insurrectionist Fever Dreams

by Firmin DeBrabander

"The gun-rights movement cleared the path for insurrection. It blew a hole in the rule of law—and Donald Trump’s would-be soldiers clamored through it. And then scaled the walls of Congress." 

Amy Coney Barrett on Guns

by Jake Charles

A Second Amendment scholar examines the SCOTUS nominee's historical interpretation of prohibitions on individual firearm ownership, concluding that her record shows a commitment to gun rights but uncertainty about how she might rule on particular cases.

The danger of denying black Americans political rights

by Kellie Carter Jackson

Without access to political rights, violence becomes a crucial tool in the fight for freedom.

Gun-control advocates believe their activism will mirror the fight for gay marriage. They’re wrong.

by James Kirchick

The better comparison is Prohibition — and we all know how that turned out.

America Passed Gun Control in 1968. Can It Happen Again?

by Jason Sokol

The King and Kennedy assassinations spurred the passage of the Gun Control Act.

We Shouldn’t Be Surprised that Young People Are Leading the Charge for Gun Control

by Bill Heiden

Most importantly, history shows that this kind of street action works.

Patrick J. Charles, author of a new book on guns, defends militia-centric understanding of Second Amendment

“There’s been people on both sides who’ve misappropriated historical evidence over time or failed to fully contextualize it.”

Jonathan Zimmerman says students should go on strike to win gun control

by Jonathan Zimmerman

West Virginia teachers won by striking. There’s a lesson in that.

7 Times in History When Students Turned to Activism

History is full of movements led by students — albeit usually in college, not high school. Some were successful and others brutally crushed, but even the latter still resonate.

Before Trump’s wild shifts on the NRA, Ronald Reagan took on the gun lobby

On May 3, 1994, Ronald Reagan and two other former presidents sent a letter to House members, urging them to support a controversial ban on lethal, military-style assault weapons.

Boycotts won't weaken the NRA's bottom line – but that's not the point

by Lawrence Glickman

The ethical point boycotters have tried to raise from that time to our own is that, in an interconnected national and international market economy, there are no innocent bystanders.

Even the Wild West Embraced Gun Control

by Gil Troy

The Wild West wasn't so wild that it—and the Stormy South—couldn’t include gun control.

This Is How You Get Gun Control

by Bruce W. Dearstyne

It’s what happened after several headline-making shootings captured public attention a century ago.

Gun-rights advocates are right that violent films encourage school shootings. They’re wrong about how.

by Matthew Christopher Hulbert

The problem isn't the violence — it's the celebration of gun culture.

A gunmaker once tried to reform itself. The NRA nearly destroyed it.

In 2001, a little more than a year after cutting a gun-control deal with the US government, the British conglomerate that owned Smith & Wesson sold it at a dramatic loss.

Why Are Conservatives So Obsessed With Gun Rights Anyway?

by John Ehrenreich

Belief in gun rights hasn’t always been a conservative ideology. Psychology helps explain how it took off.

This Isn’t the First Time Conspiracy Theorists Have Accused Student Activists of Being ‘Paid Actors’

Raymond Arsenault, a civil rights historian and author of Freedom Riders, says that in 1960, white supremacists started to lean into this technique of discrediting student activists by linking their actions to Northern interference.