American ideas of the right to bear arms, incorporated into the US Constitution and debated ever since, originated, in great part, from traditions of English law. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution, asserting the right of Americans to be armed, is a legacy of the right of Englishmen to “have arms for their defence”. That English right, enshrined in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, however, was limited to “the Subjects which are Protestants” – at that time, some 90 per cent of the population – and to those weapons “suitable to their Condition and as allowed by Law”. Despite these qualifiers, the English right to keep and carry firearms was virtually unrestrained until the Firearms Act of 1920.
The US Second Amendment, by contrast, has no religious,…
