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113 Cal. L. Rev. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/calr113 and id is 1 raw text is: The Myth of Continuity in American Gun Culture Brian DeLay* The Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen elevated history, text, and tradition as the sole criteriafor assessing the constitutionality offirearms restrictions. Gun rights advocates have responded to Bruen with a wave ofSecond Amendment challenges, most employing a three-part argument: (1) X firearms-related issue has existed since the Founding; (2) the Founders did little or nothing about it; and, therefore, (3) we cannot do anything about it, either. Legal scholars are engaged in critical work on parts (2) and (3) of that argument. As aprofessional historian involved in several ongoing Second Amendment cases, I have the disciplinary expertise to offer a critique of part (1). This Article explains why the argumentfor continuity in American gun culture is largely a myth and offers a case study of the role that historical research can play in SecondAmendment cases in the Bruen era. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z384FlMK7N Copyright C 2025 Brian DeLay. * Professor and Preston Hotchkis Chair in the History of the United States, University of California, Berkeley, Department of History. I am grateful to Joseph Blocher, Jacob D. Charles, Erwin Chemerinsky, Saul Cornell, Mark Frassetto, Thomas Laqueur, Jack Rakove, Eric Ruben, Kevin Sweeney, Jennifer Tucker, and the editors of CLR for generous and insightful feedback on drafts. Daimeon Shanks has been an invaluable research assistant and interlocutor during my work on this Article. 1

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