Findings

Congress finds the following: (1) Recognizing the preexisting right to self-defense, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees individually to United States citizens the right to keep and bear arms, including the right to bear arms in public. (2) The Second Amendment decrees that these rights to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and was enumerated in order to preserve the security of a free State. (3) In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 595 (2008), the Supreme Court of the United States confirmed that [t]here 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. (4) In McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 791 (2010), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States makes the Second Amendment fully applicable to the States. Four Justices concluded that the rights protected by the Second Amendment are fundamental to the Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty and deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition, and therefore incorporated to the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Clarence Thomas agreed that the rights protected by the Second Amendment are both fundamental and deeply rooted and, as such, are enforceable against the States under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (5) Recently, the Supreme Court acknowledged in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2156 (2022), that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the individual right to carry arms outside the home for self-defense. Further, the Court reiterated that the Second Amendment’s otherwise unqualified command only accommodates laws that are consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Id. at 2126. (6) Certain States and localities have enacted gun control laws that are not consistent with the text of the Second Amendment or this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The criminalization of peaceable, public firearms carry is repugnant to the original meaning of the Second Amendment. (7) Any State or local restriction on the right of United States citizens to keep and bear arms impairs the ability of the Second Amendment to achieve its textually specified purpose, the security of a free State.