Spitzer Wants His Own Facts on Gun Rights

Are US taxpayers STILL funding NPR?

NPR interviewed some guy named Spitzer who asserts:

"As a matter of history, we didn't really see anything like the individual point of view emerge until the 20th century," he said. "That doesn't mean individuals didn't own guns or didn't think gun ownership was an important thing — of course they did. But the chief purpose that is cited for the individual ownership of guns is personal protection — from predators, from criminals or from marauding Indians or whatever threats might arise. But you didn't need the Second Amendment to ensure that civilians would have the right to defend themselves or to own a gun to defend themselves."

The modern debate about individual gun rights, he says, began in the aftermath of Congress' enactment of the Gun Control Act of 1968, in the aftermath of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

Umnnhhh, nope.

Essentially, the individual rights understanding dominated everywhere until the 20th century. ...So the collective rights view really is widespread only from 1940 or 1968 until 2007, and then only in the federal courts and a handful of state ones. For the rest of the history of the Republic, the individual rights view held sway.

Hardy is a very competent historian, not a fabulist like Spitzer.