The Second Amendment Does Not Transcend All Others

Part of the miserable ritual that follows American mass shootings is the lament that nothing can be done unless we get rid of the Second Amendment. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens reasoned thus:

There’s a good case to be made for owning a handgun for self-defense, or a rifle for hunting. There is no remotely sane case for being allowed to purchase, as [Las Vegas mass murderer] Paddock did, 33 firearms in the space of a year. But that change can’t happen without a constitutional fix. Anything less does little more than treat the symptoms of the disease.

The pro-gun side echoes this claim of textual determinism. My colleague James Fallows, writing on Monday, who is a “famous novelist” as saying, “the Constitution trumps (if you’ll pardon the expression) all prudential or policy considerations. It makes them utterly irrelevant.” Justice Clarence Thomas, as , makes the same claim—that the text of the amendment and the Supreme Court’s case law create a