The closure of “non-essential” businesses in response to the spread of Covid-19 raises a host of difficult legal questions. Among those questions, of course, are some involving right to keep and bear arms. Put simply: Does the Second Amendment permit gun stores be temporarily closed?
Some advocates and commentators have suggested that this is an easy question with a straightforward answer—temporarily closing gun stores is a per se unconstitutional infringement of the right to keep and bear arms, tantamount to a “suspension” of the Second Amendment (or perhaps a “ban”). But that kind of categorical conclusion belies the genuinely complex and interesting constitutional questions that such closures raise. Consider at least three.