At the 2025 Gun Owners of America’s Gun Owners Advocacy and Leadership Summit (GOALS) in Knoxville, Tennessee, I delivered brief remarks on the pivotal role history now plays when debating Second Amendment rights.
I discussed the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which reshaped the legal framework for evaluating firearms laws by placing historical precedent at the forefront. I then highlighted how the Bruen Test prioritizes the Founding Era and the Second Founding Era over much of the 20th century, calling into question the constitutionality of feature and technology based laws largely originating in the 20th century. I provided examples of repeating firearms, magazine-fed weapons, and design features dating back centuries—problematizing claims that such technologies are modern innovations.
I also underscored the challenge posed by inaccurate historical testimony and the need for credible scholarship to ensure the historical record is neither misrepresented nor weaponized.
History has become the new legal battleground, making it more important now than ever to support accurate scholarship to facilitate deeper and more meaningful conversations.
Watch my GOALS 2025 speech below. You can watch all FRC video content in our Video Library.