Whether you hold with the “individual right” interpretation of the Second Amendment or the “collective right” interpretation, one thing seems clear from the history: for virtually all of the 19th century, both judicial decisions and informed commentators held the Second to guarantee an individual right. But then in the 20th century, this was reversed in several circuit court decisions such as Tot v. United States. My question is, how did the 20th century collective right rulings repudiate over a century of previous opinion on the subject? To give just one example, here’s one cite quoted by Wikipedia:
And yet by the time of Tot such opinions were either forgotten, ignored or repudiated. How exactly?
Racism. Gun rights were only for upstanding white folk, not for the dangerous and unstable underclass of poor black people who threatened those upstanding white folk’s place in society. That only became a problem later in the 19th and early 20th century, for obvious reasons. Slavery was repealed, and all the sudden white people had to contend with the fact that their hated underclass was due the same rights as them. Judges had to adjust their opinions accordingly.