Shall Not Be Infringed: An Alternative Perspective on the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states that “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” In modern times, this protection has been used to justify the complete elimination of firearms regulations, with some opponents of regulation using the argument that the founders of the U.S. would have opposed any and all forms of gun control. However, by drawing on historical precedent from the English Bill of Rights and cultural context, this article demonstrates that the opposite is true. Contrary to the “originalist” argument, the founding fathers would have been proponents of individual gun control, and the Second Amendment’s firearms protections exist to protect the rights of oppressed groups of people, not individuals.