Comment by Retric
2 days ago
Forearms yes, percussion caps no.
A large fraction of the harm from firearms comes from their ability to fire rapidly which didn’t exist when the constitution was written. As such it was making a very different balance of risk between the general public and individuals.
1. The second amendment wasn't written because the authors thought guns were inert. It was written precisely because they could impart deadly force.
2. As someone else pointed out, early repeating rifles did exist then.
3. If the meaning of the constitution is only to be evaluated against the technology available at the time -- what does that say about the validity of the 1st or 4th amendments with modern technology?
Air guns existed sure. There’s a reason those aren’t used by the military today, they just aren’t that dangerous.
They're deadly and rapid fire.
But again, in historical context, the point of the 2A was to permit people to own the most deadly weapons of war that existed at that time.
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The Girardoni repeating air rifle predates the ratification of the constitution by ~11 years and was taken on the Lewis and Clark expedition ~13 years later. Really the whole discussion around 2A is usually nonsense because it ignores the context that the entire Bill of Rights had a completely different meaning prior to the 14th amendment leading to incorporation over the last century (and other expansions of federal power via commerce clause); that is, the Bill of Rights originally did not apply to the states.
Very obviously individuals were expected to be part of the militia, which was the military at the time (c.f. the Militia Acts 2 years after ratification requiring individual gun ownership and very clearly laying out that all able-bodied white male citizens aged 18-45 were part of the militia), but also states could regulate weapons if they wanted.
> Girardoni repeating air rifle
Not a firearm.
I didn’t say we could ban compressed air powered guns, I specifically said percussion caps. The Girardoni was way less dangerous than a modern handgun.
Sure, but compressed air guns are deadly (you can find videos of people using them on deer on youtube, or if you want something less graphic, you can find ballistic gel test videos), and a repeating rifle did exist at the time and was used a couple years later by an official American expedition commissioned by Jefferson. So fast-firing weapons were not some alien technology. The wider context also makes it clear that 2A was supposed to give individuals the right to own whatever weapons the military uses because at the time, there was no standing military. Individuals were summoned and expected to bring their own weapons, hence the law requiring them to own them.
In the 230 intervening years, we've vastly increased the scope of the federal government and developed a formal military, so one might argue we ought to amend the constitution to change exactly what's allowed under 2A (e.g. it should be straightforward to have a nuclear weapons ban added with unanimous agreement), but as it stands, 2A (+14A) clearly gives individuals the right to own the arms necessary to run a functioning ("well-regulated") militia, which in 2026 means at least semi-automatic firearms.
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The Girardoni is certainly and unusual example but is deadly. However more importantly it is far from the first repeating firearm. There is the Kalthoff and Cookson repeating rifles as the most prominent examples. And both Jefferson and Washington personally got offered to purchase repeating firearms per their own journals, im im sure they weren't the only founders to receive such offers for both personal and military usage.
The balance of power being considered then was between the state and the people. Fear over a standing army was real.
Crime exited when the constitution was written, suggesting the framers were only concerned with interactions at the state level is to insult their intelligence. Not to mention specific text like people’s rights to a jury trial etc.
Principally concerned between the state and the people, not only. The context was the nature of England at the time. It was viewed as an oppressive force.
The right to a jury trial is another example of favoring the individual instead of say, the Star Chamber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
I don’t think we even disagree per se, but it’s hard to argue the constitution wasn’t written primarily with the thought of what England and how it exercised authority in mind. Individual roadmen and ruffians, let’s say, existed but weren’t existential threats to shape the tone of the new nation’s foundation, were they?
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