ABSTRACT
In June 2008, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling for the first time that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteed an individual right to bear arms for the purposes of self-defence. Gun rights activists responded with joy that a majority of the Justices had endorsed a reading of the Amendment that they had advocated for nearly three decades. Original public meaning relies heavily on history and historical discussion dominated Scalia and Stevens' opinions in Heller. But historians and legal scholars have not been reticent in criticising the history employed by both the majority and the dissent. Little of the relevant history remains without discussion in some form, but for those not steeped in the history of the early American nation, the literature is both overwhelming and seemingly inconclusive. Nothing shows how dominant has been the view that the importance of Heller lay in its originalism.
