The Second Amendment

April 7, 2014
Though not likely to end controversial debates, Waldman (My Fellow Americans), president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, delivers a balanced review of the history of Second Amendment politics and jurisprudence. He goes back to colonial America to distinguish original from changed meanings of gun ownership in the U.S. It’s a story of sudden, violent rupture—continuity for two centuries, then radical transformation when the NRA, with the help of a “remarkable, concerted legal campaign,” got involved in opposing gun control in the 1970s. As Waldman shows, the idea of individual gun ownership “simply did not come up” at the Constitutional Convention, but when Madison and others wrote a muddled Second Amendment, the seeds for later confusion and claims were laid. Guns, of course, abounded, but without constitutional protection. That laissez-faire situation ended when lawyers, ideologues, and special interests, all benefiting from the backlash against cultural change after the 1960s, campaigned to change constitutional law. Its result was the Supreme Court’s notorious 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which enunciated new constitutional law—law that even some of the nation’s most conservative jurists condemned. Waldman relates this tale in clear, unvarnished prose and it should now be considered the best narrative of its subject.

April 15, 2014
Given the murkiness of the language of the Second Amendment and worries about armed citizens from the era of the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, from the settling of the western frontier to the gangsterism of the Prohibition era, the U.S. Supreme Court has generally ruled against the constitutional right to own a gun. In 2008 that all changed. Legal scholar Waldman examines the political forces behind that change, including the growing influence of the National Rifle Association and how gun rights play into the culture wars. Waldman offers historical perspective on the fierce debate to decide how much militia the nation should support and then goes on to trace the violent history of gun use in the U.S. and the increasingly contentious debate about crime and safety, all against the backdrop of debates about originalism as applied to the Constitution. This is a lively and engaging exploration of the radically different perspectives of the Founding Fathers, worried about the nation's ability to protect itself yet fearful of a powerful military, and contemporary politicians fretting over culture wars and the role of government and the rights of individuals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2014
The 27 words of the Second Amendment guarantee the right to bear arms. But questions concerning by whom and subject to what regulations have generated thousands more words by historians, law professors, and judges--most importantly in two key U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2008 and 2010 that ruled that having a gun is an individual right and not a collective right of state militias. The role of the militia in colonial days is where Waldman (Brennan Ctr., New York Univ. Law Sch.) begins. The author discusses the debate in the First Congress on the Bill of Rights, the passage of which was the price for ratification of the Constitution. The story is thin on the next 150 years, jumping ahead to the late 20th century when a new generation of scholars--and the National Rifle Association (NRA)--worked to show the courts that the Second Amendment protected individuals' rights. VERDICT Relatively short and readable, this text is a good introduction to judicial and academic debate on the meaning and origins of the Second Amendment with enough endnotes to show the way for those who want to read further.--Michael O. Eshleman, Kings Mills, OH

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2014
A review of the evolving meaning of the Second Amendment, a single sentence fraught with emotional controversy.Interpretation of the Second Amendment has always been clouded by its prefatory clause, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state...." Attorney Waldman (Brennan Center for Justice/NYU Law; Return to Common Sense: Seven Bold Ways to Revitalize Democracy, 2008, etc.) draws on extensive historical research to argue that the amendment's purpose was to ensure that the new federal government could not interfere with the states' rights to maintain local militias as a counterweight to a national standing army; it was never intended to recognize the right of an individual to own a firearm. This was the prevailing consensus among legal scholars through the 20th century. Beginning around 1975, however, the National Rifle Association, Republican politicians and an increasing number of legal commentators pressed for a re-evaluation, culminating in 2008 when the Supreme Court held that the amendment did imply such a right in District of Columbia v. Heller, an opinion the author excoriates, along with the entire concept of "originalist" constitutional interpretation. Up to this point, the author's "biography" of the amendment is sober and sound, but it then descends into all-too-familiar partisan lamentations about the difficulties of imposing further gun controls in the post-Heller era, in spite of his recognition that gun ownership and violence have been declining for decades and that almost all Heller-based challenges to existing gun control statutes have failed. In an era in which militias have long passed into history, Waldman seems to reluctantly accept that the Second Amendment now reflects the fact that "the widespread acceptance of some form of gun ownership is part of the way Americans think." He calls on activists to change that perception in order to change the law.This thoughtful, accessible survey of Second Amendment law will be useful to anyone arguing either side of this endlessly controversial issue.

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