[In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to
restrict the sale of “cheap handguns.” In 1980, the Republican
platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the NRA
endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time.]
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THE SECOND AMENDMENT  
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Heather Cox Richardson
May 6, 2023
Letters from an American
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_ In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to
restrict the sale of “cheap handguns.” In 1980, the Republican
platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the NRA
endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time. _

Mass shootings on the rise in 2023 There have been 131 mass shootings
with four or more people wounded or killed so far in 2023 compared to
113 this time last year.,

 

For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some
version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current
gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the
takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that
massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality
Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las
Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is
new, and it is about politics, not our history.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, on which modern-day
arguments for widespread gun ownership rest, is one simple sentence:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a
free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not
be infringed.” There’s not a lot to go on about what the Framers
meant, although in their day, to “bear arms” meant to be part of
an organized militia.

As the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in 1840, “A man in the pursuit
of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty
years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms;
much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because
he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a
cane.”

Today’s insistence that the Second Amendment gives individuals a
broad right to own guns comes from two places.

One is the establishment of the National Rifle Association in New York
in 1871, in part to improve the marksmanship skills of American
citizens who might be called on to fight in another war, and in part
to promote in America the British sport of elite shooting, complete
with hefty cash prizes in newly organized tournaments. Just a decade
after the Civil War, veterans jumped at the chance to hone their
former skills. Rifle clubs sprang up across the nation.

By the 1920s, rifle shooting was a popular American sport.
“Riflemen” competed in the Olympics, in colleges, and in local,
state, and national tournaments organized by the NRA. Being a good
marksman was a source of pride, mentioned in public biographies, like
being a good golfer. In 1925, when the secretary of the NRA apparently
took money from ammunition and arms manufacturers, the organization
tossed him out and sued him.

NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and
handguns but worked hard to distinguish between law-abiding citizens
who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and
protection, and criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. In
1931, amid fears of bootlegger gangs, the NRA backed federal
legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by
criminals, the mentally ill and children; to require all dealers to be
licensed; and to require background checks before delivery. It backed
the 1934 National Firearms Act, and parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act,
designed to stop what seemed to be America’s hurtle toward violence
in that turbulent decade.

But in the mid-1970s a faction in the NRA forced the organization away
from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” It formed a
political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and two years later it
elected an organization president who abandoned sporting culture and
focused instead on “gun rights.”

This was the second thing that led us to where we are today: leaders
of the NRA embraced the politics of Movement Conservatism, the
political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and
social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced
after World War II.

Movement Conservatives embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a
white man standing against the “socialism” of the federal
government as it sought to level the economic playing field between
Black Americans and their white neighbors.

Leaders like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater personified the American
cowboy, with his cowboy hat and opposition to government regulation,
while television Westerns showed good guys putting down bad guys
without the interference of the government.

In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict
the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to
challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential
nomination, Movement Conservative hero Ronald Reagan took a stand
against gun control. In 1980, the Republican platform opposed the
federal registration of firearms, and the NRA endorsed a presidential
candidate—Reagan—for the first time.

When President Reagan took office, a new American era, dominated by
Movement Conservatives, began. And the power of the NRA over American
politics grew.

In 1981 a gunman trying to kill Reagan shot and paralyzed his press
secretary, James Brady, and wounded Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy
and police officer Thomas Delahanty. After the shooting,
then-representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation that
became known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or the
Brady Bill, to require background checks before gun purchases. Reagan,
who was a member of the NRA, endorsed the bill, but the NRA spent
millions of dollars to defeat it.

After the Brady Bill passed in 1993, the NRA paid for lawsuits in nine
states to strike it down. Until 1959, every single legal article on
the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee
individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars
funded by the NRA had begun to argue that the Second Amendment did
exactly that.

In 1997, when the Brady Bill cases came before the Supreme Court
as _Printz v. United States_, the Supreme Court declared parts of the
measure unconstitutional.

Now a player in national politics, the NRA was awash in money from gun
and ammunition manufacturers. By 2000 it was one of the three most
powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the
2008 election. In that year, the landmark Supreme Court decision
of _District of Columbia v. Heller_ struck down gun regulations and
declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to
keep and bear arms.

Increasingly, NRA money backed Republican candidates. In 2012 the NRA
spent $9 million in the presidential election, and in 2014 it spent
$13 million. Then, in 2016, it spent over $50 million on Republican
candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win
the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other
Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on
Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super
PAC, which spent $20.3 million.

The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize
the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and
activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun
rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new
emphasis on guns.

Tonight, I am, once again, posting yet another version of this
article.

—

Notes:

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_Heather Cox Richardson: I'm a history professor interested in the
contrast between image and reality in American politics. I believe in
American democracy, despite its frequent failures._

* Second Amendment
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* Gun Control
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* mass shootings
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