The Truth about the Second Amendment
10th August 2018
Charles C. W. Cooke lays it out.
Once that “serious consideration” was undertaken, the house of cards fell, and Americans got back their right to keep and bear arms. Perhaps the neatest illustration of the change can be found in the work of Harvard’s Laurence Tribe. In the 1978 edition of his American Constitutional Lawtextbook, the Second Amendment is mentioned only in a footnote, and cast solely as a means by which “to prevent such federal interferences with the state militia as would permit the establishment of a standing national army and the consequent destruction of local autonomy.” The 1988 revision contains the same characterization. The 2000 edition, by contrast, confirms that the provision represents an individual right. “The amendment achieves its central purpose,” Tribe maintained, “by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification. . . . That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right . . . on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in defense of themselves and their homes.”