Ken Cuccinelli: “The answer is no. I was never ordered or asked to do that. He respected that answer.”

One of the things Mason was concerned about, and it came out of the Stuart era that led into the Glorious Revolution and the right to bear arms being broadly spread out, was the Stuarts’ use of select militias.

And famously, Mason said, we are the militia. They are the whole people, and that was never disputed in that time period and the Commonwealth didn’t dispute that.

That means no one has had a legal dispute that will turn on the questions that this case will turn on before.

Technically, yes, but it has been made so thoroughly cumbersome and expensive that it has proven impractical for States to use it.