A new linguistic tool joins the debate. “Corpus analysis.”
In Heller and McDonald, two cases decided more than a decade ago, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun. Neither case presented the issue of carrying a gun — but in the course of interpreting the amendment for his Heller opinion, the late Antonin Scalia laid out his thoughts. As the phrase is used in the Second Amendment, he wrote, to “bear arms” is to carry weapons in case of confrontation.
A new case, New York State Pistol & Rifle Association v. Bruen, seeks to cash that check. It’s a challenge to New York’s requirement that applicants for concealed-carry licenses show “good cause,” or a non-speculative need to carry a gun for self-defense, with local officials in charge of making the determination. Especially in the state’s most left-leaning areas, it’s incredibly difficult for the average person to get a permit.
But some academics are claiming, based on a new type of research called “corpus analysis,” to have found fresh evidence that Scalia was wrong. “Bearing arms,” they say, overwhelmingly referred to military service in the Founding era, rather than simply referring to the carrying of weapons. These scholars further suggest that Heller might have been wrong more deeply — even when it comes to keeping arms — though that is not the focus of the current case (and their “bear arms” argument is generally recognized as their strongest).
