Jake Paul Says the Second Amendment Isn’t Enough. He’s Reading It Too Narrowly.

Well, Jake Paul has entered the Second Amendment chat, and strangely enough, I’m here for it... but I need to correct a little something.

In a video making the rounds, Paul argues that the United States needs a new Constitution, and part of his reasoning centers on the Second Amendment. His point is that the technological gap between the American citizen and the government has become so enormous that the Second Amendment, as he understands it, isn't really enough anymore.

He talks about drones, EMPs, RPGs and increasingly advanced weapons systems, essentially arguing that if the purpose of the Second Amendment includes giving the people the ability to stand against a tyrannical government, your everyday rifle isn't going to do you much good against the technology government possesses today.

And you know what? A lot of pro-2A folks are probably listening to that part and thinking, well... yeah.

He's not wrong about the disparity.

He's wrong about why it exists.

The Second Amendment didn't fail to keep up with technology. The Constitution didn't suddenly become obsolete because weapons evolved. Paul is looking at what Americans are currently allowed to possess and treating that as though it defines what the Founders meant when they wrote the word “arms.”

It doesn't.

The Second Amendment Says “Arms,” Not “Guns”

This is where Paul's interpretation gets way too shallow for me. The Second Amendment doesn't say firearms. It doesn't say rifles, pistols, shotguns or whatever happens to be sitting behind the counter at your local gun store. It says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

There are constitutional scholars and historians who have argued for a much broader understanding of “arms” than the handful of weapon categories Americans are accustomed to discussing today. Among Second Amendment advocates... I am one of them... you'll often hear the idea shortened to something along the lines of “whatever the government has, the people can have.”

That's shorthand for a much deeper constitutional argument about the militia, the common defense and the ability of an armed citizenry to serve as a check against government power.

But here's what makes Paul's argument so interesting: he already accepts the premise behind that argument.

He points to the disparity between the people and the government and outright asks what happens when government possesses weapons systems against which ordinary citizens have little meaningful capability. Us hardcore 2A Proponents wonder that, too. Within his argument, he invokes the Second Amendment's role as a safeguard against tyranny.

I have to say... The Founders would be so proud!

Then he gets to the word “arms” and suddenly he stops.

Paul assumes that because Americans generally don't possess drones, RPGs, EMP capabilities or other advanced weapons systems today, those things must somehow exist outside the Second Amendment. From there, he concludes that the Constitution hasn't kept up with technology.

That kind of thinking is exactly how Gun Control proponents like to twist the Constitutional understanding. They rephrase or define it to meet their agenda, or they push to have it re-written to fit THEIR narrative.

Granted, I don't think that Jake Paul did the same to promote Gun Control. I just think he's not as educated on the topic as well as he should be while chatting about it. Sadly, he's not the only one. Many Americans suffer from the same... ignorance... so-to-speak. Not everyone sits at home like some of us and reads and studies into the wee hours of the morning Constitutional Law books and reviews. Is what it is, but that's what Gun Control folks hope for.

The Founders Didn't Give Us an Equipment List

The Supreme Court has already recognized an important principle here. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court explained that the Second Amendment extends to arms that weren't in existence at the time of the founding. In other words, the Second Amendment didn’t stop evolving with weapons technology in 1791.

That shouldn't be controversial.

The First Amendment didn't become obsolete when communication moved beyond ink pot and a printing press. The Fourth Amendment didn't disappear when surveillance technology moved beyond someone physically following you down the street. Constitutional rights don't have expiration dates attached to the technology available when they were written.

The same principle matters when we're talking about the Second Amendment.

The Founders didn't need to imagine drones, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare or autonomous weapons systems. They didn't write a list of approved weapons and hope future generations wouldn't invent anything else.

They wrote arms.

That's why Paul's conclusion misses the bigger constitutional question. Instead of asking whether modern technology has made the Second Amendment obsolete, we should be asking why we've allowed our understanding of “arms” to become so much narrower than the language actually written into the Constitution.

We’ve Confused What Government Allows With What the Constitution Protects

As I've touched on a bit already, this is where decades of gun control laws have done more than restrict particular weapons. They've changed the way Americans think about the right itself.

We spend our time debating AR-15s, magazine capacities, suppressors, short-barreled rifles, machine guns and whatever happens to become the scary object of the legislative session. Every fight begins with the government drawing another line, and then the Second Amendment community has to fight over whether that particular line violates the Constitution.

Do that long enough and something subtle happens... People begin assuming the lines themselves define the right.

They don't.

What Americans are currently permitted to possess and what the Constitution means by “arms” are two different questions. Government restrictions don't rewrite constitutional language simply because they've existed long enough for people to become accustomed to them. And that distinction matters enormously to Paul's argument.

He looks at the citizen with a rifle and the government with drones and says the Second Amendment isn't enough.

I'm looking at that same disparity and asking: Who decided the rifle was where the Second Amendment stopped?

Because the text certainly doesn't say that! #ProveMeWrong

Jake Identified the Symptom and Blamed the Wrong Thing

I honestly don't think Paul's comments are ridiculous.

Quite the opposite, actually!

I think he accidentally walked straight into one of the most important Second Amendment conversations we're going to have as technology continues advancing.

The nature of “arms” is changing.

Drones are already common in civilian technology.

Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are advancing rapidly.

Electronic warfare and counter-drone technologies are becoming increasingly important.

Whatever exists twenty years from now may make today's military technology look primitive! We just might get our flying cars one day!

But, if every technological advancement requires us to rewrite the Constitution before the people can even ask whether that technology falls within an existing constitutional right, then we've fundamentally misunderstood how constitutional rights work.

Paul sees the technological gap between the government and the governed and concludes that perhaps we need a new Constitution.

To that suggestion, I say, "Hell No! Maybe just do better at educating folks on the Constitution and stop letting astro-turf political groups and the legislators they back twist it to fit their agenda."

The Second Amendment didn't fail to keep up with technology.

Government restrictions accumulated... A LOT!

Military technology has absolutely advanced.

Americans became accustomed to an increasingly narrow collection of weapons being considered acceptable for civilian possession, and somewhere along the way, many people started treating those restrictions as though they defined the word the Founders actually chose.

Sorry about your luck if you believe so... because they don't.

The Second Amendment doesn't say guns.

It says arms.

Before we start talking about replacing the Constitution because the government has better weapons than the people, maybe we should have the much harder conversation about how we allowed those two things to become so far apart in the first place.