Gun crime feels like a modern problem. Some days it dominates headlines.
But one of my favorite aspects of studying the law is its history, and it reveals that crimes committed with firearms are nothing new. The earliest case we cover in my Second Amendment class at William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada-Las Vegas is more than 200 years old.
(When training tactical medics to treat GSWs, a colleague of mine at ATF often pointed out that we have been dealing with gunshot wounds for more than 500 years.)
That’s why I was excited to see a recent post by Professor Eugene Volokh highlighting a case from 1846 out of Pennsylvania.
A defendant (or “prisoner,“ as the opinion calls him) was charged with first-degree murder. To qualify for first-degree murder under Pennsylvania’s law at the time, it had to involve poisoning, lying in wait, or be “willful, deliberate and premeditated.“
Although the case gave few facts about the altercation it seems the deceased started the quarrel by attacking the defendant. And the defendant ended it by shooting him dead. The state argued the fact the defendant was carrying a gun suggested the murder was premeditated.
No, said the court. Under Pennsylvania’s constitution, its citizens had the right to bear arms “in defence [sic] of themselves.” (I recently noted how most state constitutions have such a provision, though their language sometimes varies in interesting ways from the Second Amendment, here.)
At any rate, even though its reference to the right to keep and bear arms was in passing and a minor part of the decision, I enjoyed seeing a new, old case.
You can read Volokh’s post here and find the original case here.
BTW, ChatGPT seems less squeamish these days about generating illustrations with firearms in them. Thank goodness.