But “gun laws” aren’t just “gun laws” today; they’re often “gun-safety laws,” a way of highlighting the reasoning behind stricter regulations among those advocating for them. “Gun-control organizations increasingly like to refer to themselves as gun-safety organizations,” Spitzer said. “That’s a clear rhetorical change on their part. The language in the debate matters a great deal.”

“Gun control” as we know it today hasn’t actually been around that long. Before the 1960s, “gun control” referred to the technology of weaponry—actual devices, like the gun-control systems on Naval ships designed to turn, level, and sight machine guns automatically. After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, “gun control” took on new meaning. As lawmakers advocated for regulations that would make it harder for people to buy guns, newspapers ran articles and editorials with headlines like “The Gun and How to Control It,” and “Gun Control Needed.”

“The Kennedy assassination begins the process that culminates in the Gun Control Act of 1968,” Spitzer said. The message: Guns were a problem that needed to be controlled. And “gun control” is right there in the name of the law. It was around the same time that Americans began focusing on the nation’s “gun culture” and evoking the language of the second amendment in a way that hadn’t been a prominent part of the debate on gun rules previously.

For instance, in 1934, as Congress debated what Spitzer calls the “first modern, significant gun regulations,” representatives of the National Rifle Association testified in hearings related to the proposed legislation. “Most of the testimony was from two officials of the NRA,” Spitzer told me. “No direct reference to the Second Amendment or the right to bear arms. None. And it isn’t really until the 1960s that you begin to see the NRA saying, ‘Oh, yes, there is the right to bear arms.’ It begins to escalate in the 1960s with their rhetoric. And in the 1970s, it becomes ubiquitous.”

That change came at a time when the NRA was shifting its focus; as the organization doubled down on its political involvement, it opted for messaging that came from the Constitution. (This also happened, not coincidentally, around the same time as the 1966 publication of an influential book by Carl Bakal, The Right to Bear Arms, which argued that more guns unequivocally meant more violence.)

“And now the utterance of Second Amendment is literally a synonym for anything related to guns,” Spitzer said. “It is uttered incessantly and used in any possible connection. You can’t even count how many times that kind of wording appears in [NRA] speeches and so on. But that rhetoric really only becomes significant in the last several decades. What it really ties to is the great importance Americans attach to anything you can attach to the Constitution.”