The 2nd Amendment and the Individual Right to Gun Ownership

Back in 2012, I shared a video clip of Ice-T defending the 2nd Amendment, but that video is now dead, so I’m glad to see that Prager University has added his comments as a prologue to this defense of gun rights by Prof. Eugene Volokh.

Ice-T and Prof. Volokh make for a good combination, one dispensing common sense and the other sharing academic analysis.

In the case of Prof. Volokh, he walks through the language of the Constitution and succinctly explains why the 2nd Amendment clearly was designed to protect the individual right to keep and bear arms.

And that’s the view that consistent with the liberty-focused attitude of the Founding Fathers, who correctly saw government as a potential source of tyranny.

But there’s another part of the video that also deserves attention. Shortly before the 4:00 mark of the video, Volokh explains that the Founders gave people – through their legislators – the option of amending the Constitution (the great Thomas Sowell has made the same point).

And that does happen, sometimes with bad consequences.

But there’s been no serious effort to undo the 2nd Amendment for the simple reason that people value their constitutional liberties.

Indeed, states have been taking steps to expand and enshrine gun rights.

P.S. A British writer argued that defending gun rights was akin to defending slavery. In reality, the 2nd Amendment has been especially valuable for blacks.