Review: The History of Bans
on Types of Arms Before 1900

By Dean Weingarten. Apr 25, 2023

The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900, by David Kopel and Joseph Greenlee, Law review article, 165 pages, 2021.

The Supreme Court in the seminal Bruen decision, held: once the clear text of the Second Amendment is implicated, the burden falls on the government to prove there were widespread and accepted statutory restraints in history which are very similar to the restraints the government is defending.

The law review article by Kopel and Greenlee is the most comprehensive compilation of the laws on ownership and regulation of arms from medieval England through 1900, especially on weapons bans, yet seen by this correspondent. Those laws are of varying relevance to interpretation of the Second Amendment. The article is astonishingly comprehensive. From the introduction of the article:

This Article describes the history of bans on particular types of arms in America, through 1899. It also describes arms bans in England until the time of American independence. Arms encompassed in this article include firearms, knives, swords, blunt weapons, and many others. While arms advanced considerably from medieval England through the nineteenth-century United States, bans on particular types of arms were rare.

In the early history section of the article, one startling fact revealed was the Royal Charter of King James I, in 1606, granted to members of the Virginia Charter, perpetual rights to:

bring "sufficient Shipping, and Furniture of Armour, Weapons, Ordinance, Powder, Victual, and other things necessary for the said Plantations and for their Use and Defence there."

The rights were granted to all settlers of the Virginia colony. .....