From what I can tell, the origins of the right to bear arms comes from English common law, which refers to legal practices and systems that started in Medieval England.
Some experts say that the Magna Carta, a document from 1215, is one of the oldest examples of this idea. The English Bill of Rights, passed in 1689, said that Protestants could own guns for their defense if it was appropriate for their situation.
The founders of the United States agreed with this idea, and they wrote it into the U.S. Constitution by ratifying the Second Amendment in 1791. It says that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Many familiar names, like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, are on the list.
Justice Clarence Thomas said in NYSRPA v. Bruen that any law must be consistent with “the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The history of the “right to bear arms” goes back a lot further than most people realize.
According to Bruen, citing Caetano: “Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Ibid. (citations omitted).
Thus, even though the Second Amendment’s definition of “arms” is fixed according to its historical understanding, that general definition covers modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense. Cf. Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 411, 411–412 (2016) (per curiam) (stun guns).”
Since we did not have the internet in 1791 and the First Amendment has evolved and continued to cover free speech, shouldn’t the Second Amendment do the same?
History wasn’t one of my strong points, so am I missing something?