How to use this Page

Since Constitution Day(which was September 17th), Mark V. Tushnet has been blogging about both sides of the Second Amendment debate. See parts one, two, and three. Today Tushnet, author of Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns, concludes his series. He leaves us with an important idea: perhaps gun policy debates are missing the point. Keep reading to see what he suggests.

The Constitution isn’t going to end our fights over guns because those fights are part of today’s culture wars. The position a person takes on gun rights and gun control says something about how that person sees himself or herself as part of the national community, and such self-understandings resist change. Supreme Court decisions and social science studies can’t push people from one way of understanding themselves into another way. (more…)

Share This

Today is part three in Mark V. Tushnet’s blog series about the 2nd amendment. Tushnet is the author of Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns and is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. To read the other posts in this series click here.  Be sure to come back tomorrow for the final installment in this series.

The Supreme Court is going to consider whether to decide the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s complete ban on handgun possession. Suppose the Court adopts the gun-rights position that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. What happens then? (more…)

Share This

Yesterday, Mark V. Tushnet author of Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns, introduced us to the gun-rights argument. Today Tushnet takes a closer look at the gun-control position. Be sure to check back tomorrow for part three in this series.

Gun-control proponents support their position with several arguments. First, the text: The Second Amendment does refer to the militia, and the gun-rights position deprives the Amendment’s preamble of any operative significance, which is unusual in constitutional interpretation. But there’s more to the textual argument. The Constitution refers to the Militia in two additional places. It gives Congress the right to laws providing for the calling forth of the Militia, and it reserves to states the right to appoint the officers of the Militia. These references clearly deal with the state-organized Militia, and we ought to interpret the Second Amendment to use the term in the same way. The Second Amendment would then prohibit Congress from disarming the state-organized militia – and would thereby preserve the ability of those militias to resist an oppressive national government. (more…)

Share This

Mark V. Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is the author of fifteen books, most recently Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns. Out Of Range is honest guide to both sides of the 2nd amendment debate and an insightful analysis of how our view of the 2nd amendment reflects our sense of ourselves as a people. Part of Oxford’s Inalienable Rights Series, Tushnet’s book challenges our views of one of our most controversial freedoms, the right to bear arms. In the post below Tushnet lays out the argument. Be sure to check back tomorrow for part two.

With Constitution Day today, it seems like a good time to talk about a constitutional issue that’s likely to get to the Supreme Court’s attention pretty soon: the Second Amendment. Shortly after it opens its term in October the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear an appeal from the District of Columbia challenging a court of appeals decision striking down the city’s ban on handgun possession as a violation of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right to keep and bear arms.” (more…)

Share This

By Saul Cornell

Political reactions to the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech have been predictable. Leading Republicans invoke the 2nd amendment, or suggest arming students, while the Democratic leadership scrambles for cover seeking to avoid the wrath of NRA. If we are to make any progress in formulating effective gun policies that will reduce America’s staggering levels of gun violence, we will need to move beyond the myths that obscure the true meaning of the Second Amendment, disinformation that clouds the history of gun regulation in America. (more…)

Share This