Legal merits and flaws of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

[Kimstu]

No, you snuck “individual” in there on the “bear arms” part, which is exactly the concept whose “deep rootedness” is in question, as recently discussed.

@Kimstu

That doesn’t appear to be how people at the time saw it, though:

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.”

I apologize for inadvertently starting this hare in an abortion rights thread, but anybody who wants to discuss it in more depth can pick it up in the linked thread.