Recontextualisation of the Second Amendment and Supreme Court decisions in The New York Times

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was written over two centuries ago, but it is yet to find a definitive interpretation. The current article aims to explore its history by investigating how it has been recontextualised in Supreme Court precedents. A related aim is to underline the historically contingent nature of discourse through focusing on the phenomenon of recontextualisation. The media representation of the three Supreme Court precedents that have dealt with the amendment, United States v. Miller, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, is analysed. Media texts were collected from The New York Times between 2007 and 2011. The analysis looks at two articles from that period and includes the single article on the 1939 Miller decision. The results illustrate how the amendment has acquired new meanings by moving from one context to another and, thus, given rise to new texts and discourses.