Does the Second Amendment Preserve "White Supremacy" or Does It Protect Life and Liberty?

in your book Ellie you argue that an individual right to self-defense with a gun was not provided by the Second Amendment but by the conservative Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment in its hel decision you also say quote there was an original purpose to the Second Amendment but it wasn't to keep people safe it was to preserve white supremacy and slavery briefly Ellie how do we know that to be the case for sure yeah so I'm I'm coming up with that just because I'm reading Patrick Henry and George Mason who was then governor of Virginia at the founding of the country this is not my words this is what those white guys said when they were debating the Second Amendment they said that they needed a second amendment because they needed the armed disciplined that was their word militia to put down slave revolts and they were worried that under the original Constitution the federal government had all of the power to raise the militia right the southerners needed the militias to put down slaver votes because you know Mendy a little bit difficult to hold people in bondage against their will so you needed you needed some military superiority and the second amendment was there to make sure that the states had the power to raise the militia on their own so Virginia could raise its own militia to put down slave revolts in Virginia without having to ask Connecticut or Massachusetts whether or not they agreed with that that's why it's there that's why the white folks said it was there fast forward to 2008 and Anon just makes up an entirely different Second Amendment right out of thin air [Music] [Music] does an American citizen have a constitutional right to own a gun here's what the Second Amendment says a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep in be arms shall not be infringed now it once seemed to me like that language only protected State militias and not individuals indeed this is the view held by the four dissenting Supreme Court justices in the 2008 case of District of Columbia versus heler a landmark case dealing with gun ownership but the more research I did the more I came to realize that my initial view was mistaken and that the founders were in fact securing an individual right the five justices who voted to affirm the right to own a gun in DC versus heler had indeed made the correct decision let's look at the amendment one more time a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep in be arms shall not be infringed we first need to focus on the phrase the right of the people note that the people are the only ones whose right is secured here not the militia or a state government this phrase the right of the people comes up a few times in the Constitution for example the first refers to the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government and the Fourth Amendment secures the right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures why then if the authors of the Constitution felt so strongly about the right of the people to own guns did they include language about a well-regulated militia these opening words of the amendment might be called a justification Clause such Clauses are used to help explain why a right is being secured but it's the operative Clause that explains what right is being secured in this case the right of the people to keep and bear arms and what was the word militia understood to mean at the time well the militia Act of 1792 defined militia to mean all white males 18 to 45 today of course militia would include women and people of all Races but it was clearly not a reference to a small National Guard type group and what about the part of the amendment that says a militia is necessary to the security of a free state what the opponents of personal gun ownership ask does a personal right of gun ownership have to do with that again historical context is key in the 1790s the phrase free state wasn't used to mean an individual State like New York or Rhode Island rather it meant what we'd call today a free country a Nation free of despotism a free state is what the framers wanted America to be they saw an armed citizenry is in part a hedge against tyranny citizens who own weapons can protect themselves prevent tyrants from seizing power and protect the nation from foreign enemies this does not mean though that this right is unlimited free speech for example has long been subject to some narrow and reasonable regulations but severe restrictions on owning a gun like severe restrictions on Free Speech would violate the Second Amendment as the founders understood it maybe you think this understanding of the Second Amendment is outdated today that the constitution needs to change as public attitudes change the founders included a provision for doing just that if the public attitude really has changed the Constitution can be amended to reflect that change but ironically even if we focus on Current public attitudes the case for individual gun ownership is as strong as ever polls consistently show that over two-thirds of Americans believe that the Second Amendment secures the right of citizens Stone a gun and Congress and state governments have repeatedly reaffirmed this view including in recent decades so does the Second Amendment secure an individual right to bear arms it did when it was written it has throughout American history and it does today I'm Eugene vck professor of law at UCLA for Prager University e