Sanford Levinson’s “The Embarrassing Second Amendment” is a classic law review article that almost certainly helped lay a brick in the road to the critical District of Columbia, et al v. Heller (2008) gun rights decision that held (among other things) that:
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
Way back in 1989, Levinson wrote this interesting sentence in that Yale Law Review article that should make gun control enthusiasts basing their claims on a consequentialist logic take pause:
If one does accept the plausibility of any of the arguments on behalf of a strong reading of the Second Amendment, but, nevertheless, rejects them in the name of social prudence and the present-day consequences produced by finicky adherence to earlier understandings, why do we not apply such consequentialist criteria to each and every part of the Bill of Rights?
Looking at our 4th amendment jurisprudence, I think that we have done so on that one.
[...] Sanford Levinson on the 2nd Amendment – Grover Cleveland, Pileus [...]