Most gun control advocates believe that the surest way to reduce gun violence in America is to ban or restrict the private ownership of firearms, particularly handguns. Opponents of gun control often claim that banning handguns would be unconstitutional—specifically, that it would violate the Second Amendment, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

While gun control and gun rights advocates have hotly debated the meaning of the Second Amendment for decades, in practice, constitutional concerns have not posed a major obstacle to gun control legislation. The federal government and all fifty states have passed numerous laws regulating who may own and carry firearms and what types of weapons should be legal or illegal. Gun control advocates say this is because the framers of the Constitution never intended for the Second Amendment...