Second Amendment Could Include Owning Cannons, Heavily Armed Ships: UPenn Law Professor

Second Amendment could include owning cannons, heavily armed ships: UPenn law professor

If federal government hired privateers to fight pirates it implies private ownership of cannons and ships A University of Pennsylvania law professor has taken a position even more originalist on the Second Amendment than the late Justice Antonin Scalia. “Courts and litigants increasingly say the Second Amendment reaches only the weapons one person can carry… Source

Second Amendment Roundup: The Militia of the Sea

Jonathan Goldstein, Adjunct Professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School, has published a comprehensive analysis of the power of Congress to "grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water," U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 11.  Historically, this meant that private citizens could possess cannon and ships and could wage war at sea on enemies approved by Congress. "You couldn't buy a cannon when the …

Marque and Reprisal Clause Challenges Modern Limits on Second Amendment Arms

A new scholarly article argues that the Marque and Reprisal Clause of Article I directly undermines the modern judicial claim that the Second Amendment extends only to weapons a single person can carry. The paper, published on SSRN in 2026, is the work of Prof. J. Goldstein and is titled ‘The Militia of the Sea: The Marque and Reprisal Clause as Textual Proof of Private Heavy-Arms Ownership at the Founding.’ The article locates its constitutiona…