Words that are 231 years old shape gun-control debate across US

A spate of deadly mass shootings across the United States has put the spotlight on lawmakers' inability to enact tough gun reform and the ways in which the Second Amendment of the Constitution written in the 18th century shapes today's gun laws.

The Second Amendment gives all US citizens the "right … to keep and bear arms", words given broad interpretation by the gun lobby and Republican politicians. However, those in favor of tighter gun control disagree with the way the law is being interpreted by the Supreme Court.

Carl T. Bogus, a law professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, said: "Throughout American history, federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, consistently held that the Second Amendment only pertains to guns in the militia, which today is the National Guard and part of the Armed Services. That made sense because the Second Amendment expressly refers to the militia.

"In 2008, however, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, in which the justices divided along ideological lines, reversed centuries of precedent and held for the first time that the Second Amendment grants individuals a right to keep and bear arms unconnected to militia membership."

When the Second Amendment was written it was aimed at allowing people to be armed and protected from a tyrannical government. It came out of the colonies' suspicion of standing armies, after the Revolutionary War against Britain.

The amendment was part of the Bill of Rights, which expanded upon the Constitution by establishing clear individual rights; it was added on Dec 15, 1791.

It said that a "well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

The amendment did not focus on an individual's right to bear arms until 2008, some scholars argue.

Two cases have changed the way the law was interpreted since it was ratified in 1791. The first was the District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008. The Supreme Court then guaranteed an individual's right to keep and bear arms for lawful uses.

The second was McDonald v. Chicago in 2010. In this case the court restated that through the 14th Amendment, US citizens had the individual right to keep and bear arms regardless of city or state.

However, after 333 mass shootings until July 13, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an organization that collects data on gun violence, there is renewed urgency to reexamine gun control.

"Most Americans are disgusted by gun violence, too, but they find themselves politically incapacitated to do anything meaningful about it," Bogus said.

Last month US President Joe Biden signed into law the first major gun legislation in more than a decade, following mass shootings. The law will strengthen background checks on youths buying guns and aims to prevent those guilty of domestic abuse getting guns.

In an interview on the Public Broadcasting System in 1991 the former Supreme Court chief justice Warren Burger said the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime".