Analysis: How the Second Amendment was reinterpreted to protect individual rights
“[R]arely has the Second Amendment been more necessary to secure the rights of our fellow citizens,” Sen. Ted Cruz said at this year’s National Rifle Association convention, held in Houston days after the shooting.
The text of the Second Amendment reads: “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.” The historical consensus is that, for most of American history, the amendment was understood to concern the use of guns in connection with militia service.
In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the “militia” phrase was merely a “preface” rather than part of its integral meaning. With the exception of felons, some people deemed to have serious mental illness, “sensitive places” such as schools or courthouses, or “dangerous weapons,” the Second Amendment allows regular people to own firearms in their homes, he argued.
So how did we get here? She and other historians attribute it to a relatively recent political push by gun rights groups to reinterpret the Constitution. “There has been a decades-long and very successful movement to change the public perception of what the Second Amendment is for,” Blocher said.