In 2007, for the first time in nearly seventy years, the Supreme Court decided to hear a case involving the Second Amendment. The resulting decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) was the first time the Court declared a firearms restriction to be unconstitutional on the basis of the Second Amendment. It was followed two years later by a similar decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago, and in 2022, the Court further expanded its support for Second Amendment rights in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen—a decision whose far-reaching implications are still being unraveled. To Trust the People with Arms explores the remarkable and complex legal history of how the right to bear arms was widely accepted during the nation’s founding, was near extinction in the late twentieth century, and is now experiencing a rebirth in the Supreme Court in the twenty-first century.
