The numbers are stark, a never-ending cycle of tragedies. So far in 2022, our country has seen 356 mass shootings, far more than any other industrialized country in the world.

Anguished calls for tough gun control inevitably meet with the same response: the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court held in 2008 protects an individual right to collect weapons.

The theory that gun control legislation is nearly always unconstitutional is mistaken for two reasons. First, the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case where the individual right was found, rests for the crucial point in its analysis on a historical judgment which is demonstrably wrong. Second, once we understand that the Second Amendment was a concession to southern states intended to protect a pillar of their slave system, it becomes clear that gun control is constitutional pursuant to Congress' Thirteenth Amendment power to define and eradicate the badges and incidents of slavery.