> It’s a statute that made sense in 1789 when it was enacted by a bunch of people that thought God made universal law applicable to the whole world.
Yet the same people who are likely to be responsible if this law does get thrown out are totally fine with plenty of other laws that make a lot less sense today than in 1789. Let's not pretend that the same court who ruled that all firearm regulations need to be interpreted in the context of what people would have thought in the 18th century[1] would rule differently on a case covering the law we're discussing because of legitimate legal reasoning; they're happy throw out precedents from the most recent couple of centuries in favor of regressing to some ancient historical standard when it ends up with the result they want.
The Second Amendment imposes a clear textual standard that makes as much sense today as it did in 1789. It's not like anyone is confused about what "bear arms" means. You might think that standard is bad policy today in light of intervening changes, and maybe you would add more caveats, but plenty of people disagree about that.
The Alien Tort Statute, by contrast, literally doesn't make sense--talking about the "law of nations" is like talking about the "aether" or "faeries." It's not even an originalism issue. Even in 1789, the Founders likely didn't intend for the ATS to e.g. allow suits in U.S. courts against the British East India Company for violations of "human rights."
> It's not like anyone is confused about what "bear arms" means.
Did you intentionally avoid the actual term whose meaning there is legitimate argument over? It's "well-regulated militia", and there absolutely is wildly different opinions over what that means.
That's not at all what Supreme Court ruled with regards to the 2nd amendment. They precisely said that contemporary laws related to firearms must be consistent with the centuries of jurisprudence we have on the limits and liberties enabled by the 2nd amendment. In your own words, states must not "throw out precedents from the most recent couple of centuries."
This law, by contrast, was enacted in 1789 but only invoked exactly twice until 1980. [1] Since then it seems to have been regularly enacted with very little in the way of jurisprudence to guide its purpose, limits, and overall meaning. It also suffers from an issue that it appeals to "international law" which is a term more subject to political than legal interpretation. Contemporary examples abounds.
The Supreme Court in this case was also not basing their opinion on fact, since there actually was jurisprudence about gun control [1]
Also, it doesn't make sense to say laws should perfectly adhere with jurisprudence. Laws are enacted and changed precisely because lawmakers don't like the results the legal framework is giving them up until that point in time. To whit, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights were enacted because the lawmakers at the time did not enjoy the British legal framework and their 'unwritten constitution' as they now like to call it.
You're expressing an extremely common misconception about the Constitution. The Constitution does not grant you e.g. the right to free speech or the right to bear arms. You already naturally have these rights. The way the Constitution works is to instead restrict what laws the government can pass. The government cannot simply say 'times have changed, we're going to pass laws banning speech and guns' because the Constitution expressly prohibits that.
So instead, if they want to do that, then they would need to amend the Constitution. And that's entirely possible - the process for that is well defined, and it has been done many times. It requires a supermajority vote in both the House and Senate, and then 75% of the US states agreeing to it. It's intentionally designed such that the Constitution will only change when there is overwhelming consensus across all affected groups.
The Supreme Court's role in all of those is exclusively to ensure that laws do not violate the Constitution.
Spirit of the law should still apply even if it's an old law. You should change the law if you want a different outcome. Things get very arbitrary when judges can decide a law is too old to apply - that's how communists did their revolutionary courts in many European countries.
Yet the same people who are likely to be responsible if this law does get thrown out are totally fine with plenty of other laws that make a lot less sense today than in 1789. Let's not pretend that the same court who ruled that all firearm regulations need to be interpreted in the context of what people would have thought in the 18th century[1] would rule differently on a case covering the law we're discussing because of legitimate legal reasoning; they're happy throw out precedents from the most recent couple of centuries in favor of regressing to some ancient historical standard when it ends up with the result they want.
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/politics-mississippi-state-govern...