Thread by @Neoavatara

I mean, this is true...but what is also true is that most of the country blindly accepted that it was an individual right before Heller.

It really wasn't under debate.

Lets note that this was even the standard in much of Europe until WWII.

https://twitter.com/CitizenCohn/status/1530554763925913601

The right to bear arms started in England, and predates the Constitution. Many colonies guaranteed the right early on. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his first draft of the VA constitution that “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”

I mean, we can argue about what the extent of the 2nd amendment is (no right is absolute, obviously, as Scalia himself noted) but the individual right to bear arms was rarely, if ever, challenged for more than a century or more after our independence.

@davidharsanyi wrote in his book “not a single soul in the provisional government or at the Second Continental Congress or any delegate at the Constitutional Convention—or, for that matter, any new American—ever argued against the idea of individuals owning a firearm.”

The fact that SCOTUS didn't need to remark about this universally accepted right for over 2 centuries isn't a mark against #2A...its a mark against gun control advocates, who clearly are trying to limit a long existing right.

fedsoc.org/commentary/pub…

Scalia understood this: “Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.”