Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told attendees at a town hall in Midland, Michigan, on Saturday that the Second Amendment, properly understood through a conservative legal lens, amounts to a guarantee of “equal rights to a musket.”
Video of the event, published by The National Desk, shows El-Sayed addressing the originalist approach to constitutional interpretation favored by many conservatives. “Conservative folks, they hew to this idea called ‘originalism,’ and ‘originalism’ is the idea that you should interpret the constitution in the context in which the constitution was written,” he said. “When they promised the right to bear arms they had muskets, so, yes, everyone should have…equal rights to a musket.”
El-Sayed went on to question whether certain firearms should remain legally available. “The question we need to be asking is, are there some guns that are built just to kill as many people as possible and do we really think that those guns ought to be publicly available?” he said.
He also referenced the possibility of expanded red flag laws and measures aimed at keeping guns out of schools, adding, “Perhaps it’s more important for us to secure our kids more than it is to secure our guns.”
El-Sayed’s comments came days after a bystander stopped an attack at Silver Rail Elementary School. Police said the attacker was killed by a bystander later identified as Kaylub Giamanco, the father of two daughters enrolled at the school. Giamanco, who was carrying a concealed firearm, entered the school, cornered the attacker, and shot him.
El-Sayed’s remarks drew criticism from Second Amendment advocates who argue the “musket” framing misreads originalist legal theory, noting that courts have long applied constitutional protections, including those for speech, to technologies that did not exist at the time of the founding.
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