The political war against the Second Amendment backfired spectacularly.
Whenever politicians begin demanding another gun ban, Americans respond by buying the very firearms those politicians want to outlaw. Nothing empties a gun-store shelf faster than a politician promising prohibition.
The United States already had 300 million privately owned firearms when Congress enacted the federal assault-weapons ban in 1994. That legislation followed several earlier federal restrictions imposed in 1989. Fear of further prohibition helped create waves of purchasing as Americans concluded, quite reasonably, that today’s lawful firearm might become tomorrow’s forbidden weapon.
The 1994 federal assault-weapons ban was not permanent. Congress included a ten-year sunset provision, and the ban expired on September 13, 2004. Despite repeated demands from gun-control advocates, Congress declined to renew it. After ten years of experience with the law, Congress allowed it to expire rather than extend a restriction directed largely at particular features of semiautomatic firearms.
Since then, Americans have purchased tens of millions more firearms. Estimates now commonly place the privately owned American firearms supply at approximately 400 million or more. The exact number is unknowable because there is no comprehensive national registry. One conclusion, however, is unavoidable: gun-control politicians have become some of the most effective gun salesmen on Earth. Every threat of another ban sends buyers racing to gun stores.
Americans also reached into their own pockets to finance the constitutional litigation that politicians invited. That litigation forced courts to examine the Second Amendment’s text, history, and original public meaning. The result was a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions confirming that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to individual Americans, not merely to government-controlled militias.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 595, 628–36 (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm for lawful purposes, including self-defense inside the home.
In McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 750, 791 (2010), the Court held that the Second Amendment applies against state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 17, 24 (2022), the Court rejected judicial interest balancing and held that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the government must prove that its restriction is consistent with America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The Supreme Court has not yet squarely decided whether modern bans on semiautomatic rifles commonly labeled “assault weapons” are constitutional. In 2025, it declined to hear Snope v. Brown, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that the Court should address the AR-15 issue “soon, in the next Term or two.” Snope v. Brown, 605 U.S. ___ (2025), statement of Kavanaugh, J.
My prediction remains unchanged: the Supreme Court is going to strike down these so-called assault-weapons bans, including those imposed by states such as California and New York. Firearms possessed by millions of law-abiding Americans are plainly in common use. Calling them “assault weapons” does not erase the Constitution.
The campaign against the Second Amendment did not disarm America. It armed America on a scale its opponents never imagined.
Comments