Armed Federalism, Gun Markets, and the Right to Bear Arms in the United States

Jonathan Obert

Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2024, vol. 54, issue 3, 534-572

Abstract: This article argues that fragmented and varied regulatory, cultural, and electoral responses to guns and gun rights in the contemporary United States are a result of two long-standing features of American political life––its tradition of armed federalism and its unique, domestically oriented market for small firearms. As a result of the intersection of these two phenomena, the past 150 years have seen the growth of a fragmentary regulatory response to firearms on the part of local, state, and federal jurisdictions; the emergence of an organized national gun-rights movement; and, most significantly, the ascendance of a legal strategy by supporters of gun-rights constitutionalism. Only by examining the historical contingencies of American political institutions and markets does the contested transformation of a “right to bear arms” into gun rights make sense.

Date: 2024
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