Gun Control
Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to Catholics, enslaved people, indentured servants, and Native Americans; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned. [1][2]
Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the American Revolutionary War. Several colonies’ gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. [105]
Some laws, including in Connecticut (1643) and at least five other colonies, required “at least one adult man in every house to carry a gun to church or other public meetings” in order to protect against attacks by Native Americans; prevent theft of firearms from unattended homes; and, as a 1743 South Carolina law stated, safeguard against “insurrections and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other Slaves.” Other laws required immigrants to own guns in order to immigrate or own land.[105]
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791. The notes from the Constitutional Convention do not mention an individual right to a gun for self-defense. Some historians suggest that the idea of an individual versus a collective right would not have occurred to the Founding Fathers because the two were intertwined and inseparable: there was an individual right in order to fulfill the collective right of serving in the militia. [105][106]
Although guns were common in colonial and revolutionary America, so were gun restrictions. Laws included banning the sale of guns to Native Americans (though colonists frequently traded guns with Native Americans for goods such as corn and fur); banning indentured servants (mainly the Irish) and enslaved people from owning guns; and exempting a variety of professions from owning guns (including doctors, school masters, lawyers, and millers). [105]
A 1792 federal law required that every man eligible for militia service own a gun and ammunition suitable for military service, report for frequent inspection of their guns, and register his gun ownership on public records. Many Americans owned hunting rifles or pistols instead of proper military guns, and even though the penalty fines were high (over $9,000 in 2014 dollars), they were levied inconsistently and the public largely ignored the law. [101][105][106]
(This article first appeared on ProCon.org and was last updated on June 27, 2024.)
State Gun Laws: Slave Codes and the “Wild West”
From the 1700s through the 1800s, slave codes and, after slavery was abolished in 1865, “Black codes” (and, still later, Jim Crow laws) prohibited Black people from owning guns and laws allowing the ownership of guns frequently specified “free white men.” For example, an 1833 Georgia law stated, “it shall not be lawful for any free person of colour in this state, to own, use, or carry fire arms of any description whatever… that the free person of colour, so detected in owning, using, or carrying fire arms, shall receive upon his bare back, thirty-nine lashes, and that the fire arm so found in the possession of said free person of colour, shall be exposed for public sale.” [98][107]
Despite images of the Wild West from movies, cities in the frontier often required visitors to check their guns with the sheriff before entering the town. In Oct. 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory passed a law stating that no one could fire a gun without the mayor’s consent. A sign in Dodge City, Kansas in 1879 read, “The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited.” The first law passed in Dodge City was a gun control law that read “any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law.” [108][109]
Federal Gun Laws in the 1900s
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on Feb. 14, 1929 in Chicago resulted in the deaths of seven gangsters associated with “Bugs” Moran (an enemy of Al Capone) and set off a series of debates and laws to ban machine guns. Originally enacted in 1934 in response to mafia crimes, the National Firearms Act (NFA) imposes a $200 tax and a registration requirement on the making and transfer of certain guns, including shotguns and (“short-barreled”) rifles with barrels shorter than 18 inches, machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers, and specific firearms labeled as “any other weapons” by the NFA. Most guns are excluded from the Act. [110][111][112][113]
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 made it illegal to sell guns to certain people (including convicted felons) and required federal firearms licensees (FFLs; people who are licensed by the federal government to sell firearms) to maintain customer records. This Act was overturned by the 1968 Gun Control Act. [114]
In 1968 the National Firearms Act was revised to address constitutionality concerns brought up by Haynes v. US (1968), namely that unregistered firearms already in possession of the owner do not have to be registered, and information obtained from NFA applications and registrations cannot be used as evidence in a criminal trial when the crime occurred before or during the filing of the paperwork. [112]
On Oct. 22, 1968, prompted by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), and Robert F. Kennedy (1968), as well as the 1966 University of Texas mass shooting, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) into law. The GCA regulates interstate gun commerce, prohibiting interstate transfer unless completed among licensed manufacturers, importers, and dealers, and restricts gun ownership. [114][115]
The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA) revised prior legislation once again. The Act, among other revisions to prior laws, allowed gun dealers to sell guns away from the address listed on their license; limited the number of inspections the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (now the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) could perform without a warrant; prevented the federal government from maintaining a database of gun dealer records; and removed the requirement that gun dealers keep track of ammunition sales. [112][113][114]
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 (also called the Brady Act) was signed into law on Nov. 30, 1993 and required a five-day waiting period for a licensed seller to hand over a gun to an unlicensed person in states without an alternate background check system. The five-day waiting period has since been replaced by an instant background check system that can take up to three days if there is an inconsistency or more information is needed to complete the sale. Gun owners who have a federal firearms license or a state-issued permit are exempt from the waiting period. [114][116]
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act), part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on Sep. 13, 1994. The ban outlawed 19 models of semi-automatic assault weapons by name and others by “military features,” as well as large-capacity magazines manufactured after the law’s enactment. The ban expired on Sep. 13, 2004 and was not renewed due in part to NRA lobbying efforts. [114][117]
Federal and State Gun Laws in the 2000s
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and Child Safety Lock Act of 2005 was enacted on Oct. 26 by President George W. Bush and gives broad civil liability immunity to firearms manufacturers so they cannot be sued by a gun death victim’s family. The Child Safety Lock Act requires that all handguns be sold with a “secure gun storage or safety device.” [114][118][119]
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 was enacted as a condition of the Brady Act and provides incentives to states (including grants from the Attorney General) for them to provide information to NICS including information on people who are prohibited from purchasing firearms. The NICS was implemented on Nov. 30, 1998 and later amended on Jan. 8, 2008 in response to the Apr. 16, 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting so that the Attorney General could more easily acquire information pertinent to background checks such as disqualifying mental conditions. [114][120]
On Jan. 5, 2016, President Barack Obama announced new executive actions on gun control. His measures take effect immediately and include: an update and expansion of background checks (closing the “gun show loophole”); the addition of 200 ATF agents; increased mental health care funding; $4 million and personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (used to link crimes in one jurisdiction to ballistics evidence in another); creating an Internet Investigations Center to track illegal online gun trafficking; a new Department of Health and Human Services rule saying that it is not a HIPAA violation to report mental health information to the background check system; a new requirement to report gun thefts; new research funding for gun safety technologies; and more funding to train law enforcement officers on preventing gun casualties in domestic violence cases. [142][143]
In addition to federal gun laws, each state has its own set of gun laws ranging from California with the most restrictive gun laws in the country to Arizona with the most lenient, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign’s “2013 State Scorecard.” 43 of 50 states have a “right to bear arms” clause in their state constitutions. [101][121]
The most common state gun control laws include background checks, waiting periods, and registration requirements to purchase or sell guns. Most states prevent carrying guns, including people with a concealed carry permit, on K-12 school grounds and many states prevent carrying on college campuses. Some states ban assault weapons. [121][122]
Gun rights laws include concealed and open carry permits, as well as allowing gun carry in usually restricted areas (such as bars, K-12 schools, state parks, and parking areas). Many states have “shoot first” (also called “stand your ground”) laws. Open carry of handguns is generally allowed in most states (though a permit may be required). [121][122]
Guns and the Supreme Court
Until 2008, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld a collective right (that the right to own guns is for the purpose of maintaining a militia) view of the Second Amendment, concluding that the states may form militias and regulate guns. [47]
The first time the Court upheld an individual rights interpretation (that individuals have a Constitutional right to own a gun regardless of militia service) of the Second Amendment was the June 26, 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in DC v. Heller. The Court stated that the right could be limited: “There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited… Thus we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.” [1][3]
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 28, 2010 in McDonald v. Chicago that the Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the Due Process Clause, includes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and, thus, the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government, effectively extending the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment to the states. [123]
On June 27, 2016, in Voisine v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled (6-2) that someone convicted of “recklessly” committing a violent domestic assault can be disqualified from owning a gun under the 1996 Lautenberg Amendment to the 1968 Gun Control Act. Associate Justice Elena Kagan writing the majority opinion, stated: “Congress enacted §922(g)(9) [the Lautenberg Amendment] in 1996 to bar those domestic abusers convicted of garden-variety assault or battery misdemeanors–just like those convicted of felonies–from owning guns.” [150][151][152][153]
On Feb. 20, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated it would not hear an appeal to California’s 10-day waiting period for gun buyers, thus leaving the waiting period in place. Justice Clarence Thomas said the Court should have heard the challenge, stating “The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan,” in reference to the Court not hearing a major Second Amendment case since 2010. [156]
On Apr. 27, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated it would not rule on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. et al., v. City of New York. The case revolved around a New York City regulation that prevented residents with “premises licenses” to take their guns to second homes and shooting ranges outside of New York City. The city repealed the regulation when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The ruling would have been the first on the scope of the Second Amendment in almost a decade. [168]
On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear almost a dozen cases appealing gun control laws, leaving the laws in place. In question were laws in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey that require residents to meet specific criteria to obtain a permit to carry outside of their homes. Also in question was a Massachusetts law banning certain semiautomatic guns and high-capacity magazines and a California law requiring microstamping technology and design features. Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh dissented, arguing that some of the cases should have been heard by the Supreme Court. [173]
2020 COVID-19 Pandemic
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic caused gun sales to rise, and resulted in a conflict between the NRA and several states when gun and ammo shops were not included as essential businesses during stay-at-home orders. [166]
A significant portion of schools in the U.S. were temporarily closed in Mar. 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. That month was the first March to pass without a school shooting since 2002, the year most 2020 high school seniors were born. [167]
The FBI conducted over 3.7 million gun background checks in Mar. 2020 for the sale of 1.9 million guns in the US, the second highest number of gun sales in one month after Jan. 2013, which saw gun sales reach 2 million following President Obama’s reelection and the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The FBI conducted over 2.9 million background checks in Apr. 2020, over 3.1 million in May 2020, over 3.9 million in June 2020 (an all-time high), and over 3.6 million in July 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic continued. [169][170][174][175]
The FBI conducted more background checks in 2020 than in any other year since 1998 when the agency began collecting data. The FBI reported 39,695,315 background checks completed in 2020, up from 2019 in which 28,369,750 million checks were performed. [181]
June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court Ruling & Federal Actions
In the first major gun control ruling in over a decade, on June 23, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that New York’s concealed carry law, which required applicants to show “proper cause” for the concealed carry permit, was unconstitutional in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 6-3 majority, stated, “[b]ecause the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.” Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion, cautioned, “Our holding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun. Nor does it decide anything about the kinds of weapons that people may possess.” [186][187]
Concurrently, the U.S. House and Senate compromised to pass the first major gun legislation package in almost three decades. The bill, signed by President Joe Biden on June 25, 2022, came together in the month after the Uvalde, Texas elementary school mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead, just after a Buffalo, New York grocery store shooting left 10 adults dead. [188][189]
According to Emily Cochrane and Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times, “The gun legislation will expand the background check system for prospective gun buyers under the age of 21, giving authorities up to 10 business days to examine juvenile and mental health records. It sets aside millions of dollars so states can fund intervention programs, such as mental health and drug courts, and carry out so-called red flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from any person found by a judge to be too dangerous to possess them. It pours more federal money into mental health resources in communities and schools across the country, and it sets aside millions for school safety. The legislation also toughens laws against the trafficking of guns and straw purchasing, the practice of buying a gun on behalf of someone barred from purchasing one. And for the first time, it includes serious or recent dating partners in a ban on domestic abusers buying firearms, tightening what is known as the boyfriend loophole.” [188]
On Sep. 19, 2022, U.S. District Judge David Counts ruled that a federal law banning people under felony indictments from purchasing a firearm is unconstitutional based on the June 23, 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Counts noted “this case’s real-world consequences – certainly valid public policy and safety concerns exist,” but countered, “the Government must prove that laws regulating conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text align with this Nation’s historical tradition. The Government does not meet that burden.” [190]
On Mar. 14, 2023, President Joe Biden issued an executive order: “Executive Order on Reducing Gun Violence and Making Our Communities Safer.” Among other actions, the order directs U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “to ensure that licensed gun dealers are aware and conduct the required background checks before purchases” in compliance with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (signed into law in June 2022). The Biden administration indicated that the new requirements would bring the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without congressional action. [192][193]
On June 21, 2024, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law making it a crime for anyone with a domestic violence court order to possess a gun. The 8-1 ruling is the first since 2022 in which the court upheld a gun restriction. [198]