If you would like to know what's been going on with right to arms litigation in the past two years, you're in luck. Published a few weeks ago is the 2023 Supplement to Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy, coauthored by me and Nicholas Johnson (Fordham), George Mocsary (Wyoming, Director of the Firearms Research Center), Gregory Wallace (Campbell), and Donald Kilmer (Lincoln). In 330 pages, the supplement brings you up to date on the legal developments on the right to arms in 2022 and 2023.
The third edition of that textbook was published in late 2021. At 1,400 pages and $275, it's a bargain when calculated on cost per word. But the supplement is absolutely free, even if you didn't buy the main textbook.
Of course, the supplement examines in depth the U.S. Supreme Court's monumental Bruen decision from June 2022. That case affirmed the right to bear arms in public for lawful self-defense. More broadly, Bruen instructed lower courts to decide Second Amendment cases the way that Court had decided District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008: based on the original meaning of the Second Amendment, rather than on judges' personal evaluations of the costs and benefits of gun control. The 2023 Supplement catalogues the profusion of cases challenging many different laws on the ground that they are contrary to the Second Amendment's original meaning.
