Gun rights invoked in birthright citizenship debate

President Trump’s challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment had gun-rights and immigration-rights advocates arguing

President Trump’s challenge this week to the long-held understanding that the Constitution guarantees citizenship to children born on U.S. soil, even if their mother was in the country illegally, has invoked another hotly debated constitutional right — to bear arms.

Gun control advocates have long questioned whether the Constitution’s seemingly straightforward Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms” really means that the lady next door can legally keep a semiautomatic rifle in her bedroom. Courts and constitutional scholars have long sided with gun rights advocates who say it does.

Trump this week questioned whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s seemingly straightforward guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States” applies to children of immigrants here illegally. Courts and constitutional scholars have long sided with immigration rights advocates who say it does.

But the president’s pronouncement had gun-rights and immigration-rights advocates using each other’s logic as they traded arguments on social media this week.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, ribbed conservatives on Twitter over whether their insistence that the Second Amendment means what it says applies to the Fourteenth.

Antonio Salguero, a security contractor and former Libertarian state Senate candidate for the district east of San Diego, replied that both the Second and Fourteenth amendments “are very clear with no room for interpretation.”

“Both Democrats and Republicans are wrong about a lot of things,” he added.

The Firearms Policy Coalition, a gun rights group, jumped into the fray as well, noting that gun control advocates have criticized justices and constitutional schol-

ars who insist on sticking to the original meaning of the Constitution’s words.

“So, is everyone a textualist/originalist now?” the firearms coalition asked on Twitter, referencing the Second Amendment’s language that gun rights “shall not be infringed.” “Let’s go back to that whole, ‘shall not be infringed’ thing.”

Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, said in response to questions from this news organization that “we believe that the Constitution’s text, structure, and limitations on the size and scope of government matter in all cases.”

“We work hard to protect the freedom of speech, due process, equal protection of the laws, and many other rights in addition to our Second Amendment work because all of our rights will stand or fall together,” Combs said.

He added that gunrights supporters don’t necessarily consider the Republican president an ally.

“We measure outcomes and work product, not empty rhetoric and useless keynote speeches at gun conventions,” Combs said.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who teaches constitutional law and was a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, said Wednesday that he doesn’t think the argument over birthright citizenship will have much effect on gun rights.

“Some constitutional provisions have been interpreted based on a close reading of the text and the original meaning; others haven’t,” Volokh said by email. “I’m not saying here that either approach is necessarily good or bad — but given this wide array of interpretive approaches for various constitutional provisions, I don’t think that, say, reinterpreting the Citizenship Clause using a ‘living Constitution’ approach would materially increase the likelihood that the Second Amendment would be so reinterpreted.”

Volokh said in an online Reason article Wednesday that while he personally disagrees with the concept of birthright citizenship, “the Constitution seems pretty clear to me” that children born to illegal immigrants on U.S. soil are citizens. He noted that the Supreme Court has repeatedly taken this view.

Volokh said he also agrees with the court majority’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in a 2008 decision that upheld an individual’s right to possess a gun. The decision rejected a guncontrol advocates’ argument, based on the Second Amendment’s preamble, that the right to bear arms applied only to those serving a “well-regulated militia.”

But he doubted the current Fourteenth Amendment debate would much affect arguments over gun rights.

“I don’t think the two would, as a practical matter, be much connected,” Volokh said.