This video considers the perspectives of gun rights advocates, scholars, and those pressing for stricter firearms regulation as it explores how the court has reinterpreted the Second Amendment.
Experts underscore pivotal developments, including the Founding era's focus on “a well regulated militia” and the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Supreme Court affirmed an individual’s right to own firearms for personal use. Key moments – like the 1934 National Firearms Act targeting violent mobsters, and the Supreme Court’s decision in 2010 in McDonald v. Chicago, extending Second Amendment rights to state and local governments – illustrate how the balance between regulations and rights has shifted over centuries.
Through personal accounts from survivors of the 2022 mass shooting at a July 4 parade in Highland Park, Ill., that left seven people dead and 48 wounded, the narrative captures the emotional toll of gun violence.
Today, as efforts to limit access to high-powered weapons face legal challenges and courts reinterpret the Second Amendment, the future direction of gun regulation is uncertain. Meanwhile, new data from the C.D.C. show a clear link between weaker gun regulations, higher gun ownership rates and elevated gun death rates, as highlighted in a recent Violence Policy Center analysis.
Gun law advocates say they will keep pressing the case for what polls estimate nearly 60 percent of Americans want: gun laws that balance regulation with Second Amendment rights.
View transcript here.
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