Today the debate over gun ownership rages in ways the Founding Fathers could not have possibly predicted when they gathered in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. Politicians, pundits and pro-gun ownership activists all turn to the Second Amendment to justify the right to bear arms.
This short, awkwardly worded clause is the subject of a new book by Michael Waldman, president of NYU School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice, who joined Margery Eagan and Jim Braude Thursday to discuss the gun debate. Fittingly, his book is titled The Second Amendment: A Biography.
The history of the Second Amendment has been spasmodic, to say the least. For 218 years it was interpreted as a straight-forward directive authorizing the formation of state militias. But in 2008, the Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller changed all that when it gave individuals the Constitutional right to own guns for self-defense.
"It's shocking how late it was in United States history when everything changed," Waldman said.
The renewed interest in lawful gun ownership began in the 1970s, when an increasingly radicalized NRA consolidated enough political power to turn gun ownership into what Waldman describes as a "constitutional crusade." Recent high-profile mass shootings — Waldman wrote about this topic following the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 — have thrust the gun debate back into the spotlight.
What is unusual about the Second Amendment in a post-Heller America, Waldman writes, is that gun advocates rely almost exclusively on the original intent of the Constitution for justification.
Maddeningly, contextual information on how the signers made their decision is hard to come by. There is not a single word about an individual's right to a gun for self defense in the notes from the Constitutional Convention, and James Madison, who was responsible for writing the first iteration of the amendment, never explained its phrasing.
But there is evidence that gun control laws existed even back then.
"If you look at Boston and other colonial cities there were guns, and plenty of them," Waldman said. "But there were gun laws, too. It was illegal to have a loaded gun in your home because it could blow up. You couldn't fire a weapon within most city limits. People then understood rights and responsibilities as going together."
To hear more of the interview, listen here:
