"This principle has no existence in the United States: it is a scion from that idolatrous veneration for the regal character.... Allegiance in America, is only due to the state."
— St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries (American Edition)

The Founders weren't refining English common law — they were rejecting it wholesale. Perpetual allegiance assigned by geography because a king owned the dirt you were born on isn't just un-American, it's the specific thing they fought a war to get away from. If that's the foundation for the current birthright interpretation, that's a shaky foundation.

The amendment's treatment of Native Americans confirms it. Members of tribal nations—born within U.S. borders—were explicitly not considered citizens under the 14th Amendment because they maintained allegiance to their tribes.

This is the part that cuts through the noise. If "born on U.S. soil" were the whole answer, Elk v. Wilkins makes no sense at all. The court in 1884 clearly understood "subject to the jurisdiction" to mean something beyond physical presence — and that ruling didn't come from a fringe interpretation, it came from reading the clause the way the man who wrote it said it should be read.

The reason gun owners should care has nothing to do with immigration politics. It's about method. Originalism and textualism are the tools that gave us Heller and Bruen — and those tools only hold up if courts apply them consistently. When the same bench stretches constitutional text in one direction to reach a preferred outcome, that's precedent for stretching it in another direction the next time the Second Amendment comes up.

For the forum: Has constitutional interpretation method — originalism vs. living constitution readings — actually changed how you think about any firearms case, and if so, which one shifted your view?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett