July 14, 2010 10:20PM # Justice Thomas, Pandora, and Stephen Colbert Walk into a Gun Store… By [Ilya Shapiro](https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro) --- SHARE My sometime co-author Josh Blackman [points out](http://joshblackman.com/blog/?p=4867) a parallel between Justice Thomas’s fascinating concurrence in *McDonald v. Chicago* — which extended the right to keep and bear arms to the states — and the [“Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed”](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1503583) article we published earlier this year. Justice Thomas in *[McDonald v. Chicago](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf)*: > With the inquiry appropriately narrowed, I believe this case presents an opportunity to reexamine, and begin the process of restoring, the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment agreed upon by those who ratified it. Blackman & Shapiro in [Pandora’s Box](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1503583): > The purpose of this article is to provide a roadmap to welcome the Privileges or Immunities Clause back into constitutional jurisprudence. The *Slaughter-House Cases* “sapped the \[Privileges or Immunities Clause\] of any meaning” but the Supreme Court now has the opportunity correct this mistake. Taking up Justice Thomas’s gauntlet, we “endeavor to understand what the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thought” the Privileges or Immunities Clause meant, and seek to restore that original meaning. Relatedly, for my attempt to explain the meaning of the right to keep and bear arms while talking to a crazy character and a humorless gun-control advocate, see [my recent appearance on the Colbert Report](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/340923/july-08-2010/automatics-for-the-people---ilya-shapiro---jackie-hilly). ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).