As the United States marks 250 years of independence, the Second Amendment remains central to disputes over self-defense, gun regulation, public safety and the scope of constitutional rights.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The 250th anniversary of the United States has renewed attention on the long and divisive history of gun ownership in America, where firearms have been tied to the nation’s founding, westward expansion, self-defense traditions and modern political disputes over public safety.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Those 27 words remain among the most debated in American law and politics. They have shaped arguments over private gun ownership, militia service, criminal restrictions, public carry, firearm bans and the limits of government authority over weapons.
Firearms have been present throughout American history, from the matchlock muskets carried by early settlers to the six-shooters associated with the frontier and the firearms used by Korean business owners defending property during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, according to a detailed report by The Epoch Times.
Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow with Advancing American Freedom and a Second Amendment scholar, said the American right to keep and bear arms has few parallels elsewhere.
“It’s an incredibly short list [of countries that recognize the right to own guns], and there are none of them have anything in theory or practice that is what I would say [is] a true equivalent of the American right to keep and bear arms,” Swearer told The Epoch Times.
The scale of civilian gun ownership in the United States is also unusual. Based on sales data, permit applications, background checks and other factors, the Sixguns Fraternity estimates that between 400 million and 500 million firearms are in civilian hands in the United States. That amounts to an average of about two firearms for every adult over age 18.
The same tradition that many gun-rights advocates view as essential to liberty remains a source of concern for gun-control organizations. Those groups argue that violence intervention programs, strict gun laws, firearm bans and stronger regulation of the firearms industry should be part of what they describe as common-sense public safety policy.
Gun-control advocates point to mass shootings, school shootings and violent crime involving firearms as evidence that stronger rules are needed. Everytown for Gun Safety states on its website, “The gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 26 times higher than that of other developed countries, but research shows that common-sense public safety laws can reduce gun violence and save lives.”
The group and other gun-control organizations also say firearms are the leading cause of death for American children. Gun-rights advocates dispute how that data is framed.
The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control reports that the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 17 is “unintentional injuries.” On the CDC website, Matthew Garnett of the National Center for Health Statistics defined unintentional injury deaths as fatal injuries that were “unintended, unplanned, and did not occur on purpose.”
“Unintentional injury deaths include a wide array of mechanisms, with the four most common being: poisoning, motor vehicle crashes, drowning, and falls,” Garnett wrote.
Gun Owners of America argues that Everytown’s claim about children and firearms is based on data that includes 18- and 19-year-olds, even though most child mortality statistics count ages 1 to 17 and classify 18- and 19-year-olds as adults.
Robert J. Spitzer, professor emeritus at the State University of New York College at Cortland, said public safety has long been part of America’s gun-law tradition. He has written extensively on the Second Amendment and described laws dating from before the Revolution to modern times in a 2017 Duke University article, “Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights.”
Spitzer said American history includes laws governing where and how guns could be carried, who could own them and which arms were protected. He argued that some modern policies often framed as a return to earlier American practice are actually departures from historical regulation.
“[These] laws are not a return to the past. They are a refutation of America’s past, and a determined march away from America’s gun regulation tradition,” Spitzer wrote. “And these changes have nothing to do with improving safety or security in society, but everything to do with politics.”
The founding generation inherited much of its legal thinking from English common law. Many of the founders were familiar with Sir William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” which described remedies available when a person’s rights were violated or when someone was attacked. Blackstone wrote that after courts and petitions to the king and Parliament, the final safeguard was “lastly to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense.”
That view was reflected before the adoption of the Second Amendment in arguments made by John Adams, later the second president, when he defended British soldiers charged with murder after the 1770 Boston Massacre.
On March 5, 1770, colonists confronted a British soldier guarding the Customs House in Boston. British Army Capt. Thomas Preston brought seven soldiers to assist. One soldier fired as tensions rose, and the others followed. Three colonists, including Crispus Attucks, died immediately. Two more died later.
Adams, Josiah Quincy Jr. and Robert Auchmuty Jr. represented Preston. Adams argued the soldiers had reason to believe they were in danger and drew a distinction between arms used for defense and arms used for offense.
“Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defence, not for offence, that distinction is material and must be attended to,” Adams stated.
Preston was acquitted.
Stephen Halbrook, a Fairfax, Virginia-based attorney and senior fellow with the Independent Institute, said civilian gun ownership was closely tied to the founding-era understanding of militia service.
“It was considered a duty,” Halbrook told The Epoch Times.
Halbrook said the early Jamestown settlement nearly failed in part because of conflict with hostile Indians, and colonists were expected to remain armed.
“You had a responsibility … to have arms in your home and basically to carry them around with you. After the Constitution comes into being in 1792 the federal militia laws … required, that every able-bodied white male citizen would have to provide arms for himself and enroll in the militia, and to go when called to duty,” Halbrook said.
Alexander Hamilton addressed the militia system in Federalist Paper No. 29, describing it as composed of armed residents prepared to defend themselves and their communities. Hamilton said “well-regulated” meant members would “acquire the degree of proficiency in military functions which would be essential to their usefulness.” He also emphasized that militias would retain state authority over officers and training.
“Reserving to the states respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress,” Hamilton wrote.
Federal law still defines the militia under 10 U.S. Code § 246. The unorganized militia consists of able-bodied males ages 17 to 45 who are not members of the National Guard or Naval Militia, along with females who are members of the National Guard or Naval Militia. Forty-five states also have militia laws. Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and West Virginia do not have established militias. Twenty-two states have active militias, though Connecticut’s is ceremonial, while the rest are inactive unless called into service.
Swearer said the United States has moved away from the original militia model, but modern examples still show Americans taking up arms when government protection breaks down.
During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which followed the acquittal of four police officers charged in connection with the beating of Rodney King, Korean business owners and residents in Koreatown armed themselves to protect homes and businesses. Many believed police were not intervening. The armed residents became widely known as the “Rooftop Koreans.”
“It is arguably a militia usage. It’s that same understanding of the people protecting themselves when the government fails to protect them,” Swearer said.
American law has also included restrictions on firearms from the colonial period forward. Early regulations covered the discharge of firearms, storage rules, brandishing, dueling, inspection of gun manufacturing facilities, hunting, carry practices and bans on certain weapons. Laws also restricted who could possess arms.
Halbrook said many early prohibitions were aimed less at guns themselves than at keeping specific groups disarmed. Spitzer noted that in 1619 the first General Assembly barred the sale of guns, powder or shot to Indians, with hanging as the punishment for violation. Another colonial law requiring church attendance instructed that “all such as bear arms shall bring their pieces, swords, powder and shot,” likely so colonists gathered for worship could defend themselves if attacked.
Modern law likewise bars certain people from possessing firearms, including felons, some people with mental illness and others deemed dangerous. The Supreme Court upheld that concept in the 1980 case Lewis v. United States, ruling under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 that “the fact of a felony conviction imposes firearm disability until the conviction is vacated or the felon is relieved of his disability by some affirmative action.”
The Supreme Court reaffirmed related principles in United States v. Rahimi in June 2024. In that case, the court ruled that disarming people deemed by a court to be dangerous is consistent with the Second Amendment.
The case involved Zackey Rahimi of Arlington, Texas, who was subject to a domestic violence restraining order after abusing his girlfriend. Rahimi was disarmed under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which bars people subject to such orders from possessing or purchasing firearms. After the order, he assaulted another woman and was involved in at least five shootings. The Fifth Circuit found the law unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court reversed that ruling.
“Since the Founding, the Nation’s firearm laws have included regulations to stop individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” the Supreme Court wrote. “As applied to the facts here, Section 922(g)(8) fits within this tradition.”
In another case, United States v. Hemani, the court in June 2026 rejected the idea that the federal government could automatically strip a person of the right to bear arms solely because the person used drugs. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said courts must give more consideration to whether the individual had lost the capacity to reason.
Halbrook said the first laws resembling modern concealed-carry restrictions appeared in the early 19th century, with Kentucky and Louisiana passing laws in 1813 that prohibited concealed carry of weapons, including knives. He said those early Southern laws reflected ideas about honor and dueling.
“In Kentucky … you had the code of dueling … and it would be ungentlemanly to carry an arm concealed,” Halbrook said. “It was kind of a macho thing … only a person with bad intentions would hide [his weapons].”
Gun restrictions based on race and political status have faced a different legal legacy. In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that slaves were not citizens and therefore did not possess constitutional rights, including the right to keep and bear arms.
“It cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens … to keep and carry arms wherever they went,” the decision stated.
After the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau was established in 1865 to help ensure freed slaves had the same civil rights as other Americans, including Second Amendment rights. Later efforts to deny black Americans those rights were generally rejected by courts as unconstitutional.
Major federal gun laws followed in the 20th century, including the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986.
The National Firearms Act responded to organized crime during the 1920s and 1930s and regulated weapons considered dangerous or unusual, including fully automatic machine guns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns and silencers. The law was structured through Congress’ taxing power, though the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives later described the tax as a secondary purpose.
“Its underlying purpose was to curtail, if not prohibit, transactions in [National Firearms Act] firearms,” the ATF website states.
The law required Federal Firearms License holders dealing in National Firearms Act items to pay a $200 tax, an amount intended to discourage ownership. That tax remained $200 until last year, when it was reduced to $0.
The Gun Control Act addressed constitutional problems with the National Firearms Act. In Haynes v. United States in 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that requiring a person to register a National Firearms Act item and then prosecuting that person based on information from the registration violated the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, enacted in 1986, expanded the definition of “silencer” to include combinations of parts and parts used to make silencers. It also barred the transfer or possession of machine guns except by state and law enforcement agencies or when the machine guns had been lawfully owned before May 19, 1986.
In the 2000s, the Supreme Court issued three major decisions that reshaped the modern gun debate.
In District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, the court ruled that Washington’s handgun ban and requirements that privately owned guns be kept unloaded and locked violated the Second Amendment. The court found that the amendment protects an individual right to carry firearms for protection.
On June 28, 2010, the court ruled 5-4 in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments as well as the federal government.
Then, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen in June 2022, the court rejected the two-step “means test” many lower courts had used to evaluate gun laws. Under that earlier approach, courts considered whether a law advanced a public goal such as reducing crime, even if the law burdened Second Amendment rights.
In Bruen, the court ruled 6-3 that gun laws must be consistent with the nation’s history and tradition. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that a firearms regulation must match the Second Amendment’s text and have a “historical analog” from the time of the amendment’s ratification.
After Bruen, states with strict gun laws, including New York, California, Hawaii, Illinois and Rhode Island, enacted new measures often described as “Bruen response laws.” Hawaii passed a law barring firearms on all private property open to the public unless the property owner expressly allowed gun owners to carry. The Supreme Court recently struck down that law in Wolford v. Lopez, ruling that it placed an undue burden on licensed gun owners.
Rhode Island, Virginia and Illinois banned some semiautomatic firearms described by supporters of the laws as assault weapons. New York and California began requiring background checks for ammunition purchases in 2023.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said when announcing the ammunition background check law that the policy was aimed at people legally prohibited from owning weapons.
“We know this has nothing to do with lawful gun owners, nothing to do with them at all. These are people who have been convicted of felonies or other categories of people that should be prohibited from firearms and ammunition,” she said.
During President Joe Biden’s administration, the federal government enacted the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, which included funding for violence intervention programs and stronger gun-control provisions. Biden also opened a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, supported broader background checks and directed the ATF to take a tougher approach toward firearms manufacturers and dealers through a zero-tolerance policy.
Gun-rights advocates have viewed the Supreme Court’s recent decisions and President Donald Trump’s second term as a more favorable environment for their priorities. Trump closed the White House gun violence office, dismantled many Biden-era gun-control programs and opened a Second Amendment office inside the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Some gun-rights groups continue calling for repeal of the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act, the shutdown of the ATF and the destruction of gun sales records that they claim are being used to build an illegal registry. The ATF denies maintaining such a registry.
Halbrook said those who care about gun policy must stay active in the political process.
“They have to pay attention to politics, they have to vote, they have to support candidates who are going to be on their side, and they have to vote against those who are against them,” Halbrook said.
“I mean, I think it really boils down to you have to participate in the political system.”
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