Will the Supreme Court Revisit its Broad Reading of the 2nd Amendment?

That’s a good question after a mass murderer used battlefield weaponry to slaughter scores of people today.

But the Court’s composition is conservative and likely moving further to the right—so, no, the Court will not likely allow state and local governments to further restrict gun purchase or ownership.

Here is a summary of where we stand today.

The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Four justices—in the minority in Heller v. District of Columbia (2008)— read the grammatical structure of the Second Amendment to limit the right to bears arms to keeping weapons in conjunction with maintaining freedom from an outside oppressor, like English kings were to colonists.

The five justices in the majority said that the text had to be understood by the terms “bear arms,” and in the 1700s, that was open-ended.

Here is the minority-dissenting viewpoint, written by Justice John Paul Stevens:

Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case….  The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

Here is the majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia:

By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. See Malcolm 122–134. Blackstone, whose works, we have said, “constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 715 (1999), cited the arms provision of the Bill of Rights as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. See 1 Blackstone 136, 139–140 (1765). His description of it cannot possibly be thought to tie it to militia or military service. It was, he said, “the natural right of resistance and self preservation,” id., at 139, and “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense.”