Second Amendment

Current doctrine proceeds in two stages. A court first asks whether the Amendment's plain text covers the people, arms, and conduct at issue. If it does, the restriction is presumptively unconstitutional, and the government must show consistency with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen rejected free-form interest balancing at this stage. United States v. Rahimi clarified that history supplies relevant analogues, not necessarily an identical historical twin.

The Court's 2026 decision in Wolford v. Lopez applied that method to public carry. It held unconstitutional Hawaii's default rule forbidding licensed concealed carry on private property open to the public unless the owner expressly consented. Property owners remained free to exclude firearms; the constitutional defect was the state's broad default prohibition, for which it failed to establish a sufficiently representative historical tradition. The decision therefore concerns a governmental carry rule, not a constitutional right to disregard an owner's choice.

For a test question, identify the regulated conduct, the level of government, and the proposed historical analogue. Do not infer that every firearm rule is valid or that every rule is forbidden. In Rahimi, the Court rejected a facial challenge to a federal law disarming a person subject to a qualifying domestic-violence restraining order, reasoning that the law could constitutionally apply after a judicial finding that the person posed a credible threat. The central distinctions are textual coverage, incorporation, the historical-tradition inquiry, and the difference between public regulation and private property control.

Video lesson: Civil Rights & Liberties: Crash Course Government & Politics #23