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This is an authoritative study of the second amendment, using history and current-day analysis. It is one of the only scholarly works on the subject, but has proven widely accessible. Halbrook traces the origins of the Second Amendment back to ancient Greece and Rome, and then through the “freemen” movement in 18th-century England and France. He demonstrates that the framers of the Constitution were conscious of such history when they drafted the Second Amendment, and that the Second Amendment was clearly intended to allow possession of firearms not just for defense of personal life and property but also to prevent government infringement of human liberties. His meticulous, thorough scholarship demonstrates that the right to bear arms is as fundamental a right under the Constitution as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
| Preface | ||
| Introduction: Firearms Prohibition and Constitutional Rights | 3 | |
| 1 | The Elementary Books of Public Right | 7 |
| The Citizen as Arms Bearer in Greek Polity: Plato and Aristotle | 9 | |
| From Republic to Empire in Rome: Cicero versus Caesar | 14 | |
| Machiavellian Interlude: Freedom and the Popular Militia | 20 | |
| Absolutism versus Republicanism in the Seventeenth Century | 24 | |
| Arms, Militia, and Penal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Thought | 32 | |
| 2 | The Common Law of England | 37 |
| The Tradition of the Armed Freeman | 37 | |
| Gun Control Laws of the Absolute Monarchs | 40 | |
| That Subjects May Have Arms for Their Defense: The Glorious Revolution and Bill of Rights | 43 | |
| The Common-Law Liberty to Have Arms: From Coke to Blackstone | 49 | |
| 3 | The American Revolution and the Second Amendment | 55 |
| Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed: Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 | 55 | |
| The American Revolution: Armed Citizens against Standing Army | 58 | |
| The Controversy over Ratification of the Constitution | 65 | |
| To Keep and Bear Their Private Arms: The Adoption of the Bill of Rights | 76 | |
| 4 | Antebellum Interpretations | 89 |
| Judicial Commentaries: The Armed Citizen as the Palladium of Liberty | 89 | |
| Carrying Weapons Concealed: The Only Right Questioned in Early State Cases | 93 | |
| The Disarmed Slave and the Dred Scott Dilemma | 96 | |
| That "The People" Means All Humans: Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment | 99 | |
| 5 | Freedmen, Firearms, and the Fourteenth Amendment | 107 |
| That No State Shall Disarm a Freedman: The Proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment | 108 | |
| The Public Understanding and State Ratifications of the Fourteenth Amendment | 115 | |
| The Impact of the Fourteenth Amendment upon State Constitutions | 124 | |
| That No Militia Shall Disarm a Freedman: The Abolition of the Southern Militia Organizations, 1866-1869 | 135 | |
| Against Deprivation under Color of State Law of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms: The Civil Rights Acts of 1871 and 1875 | 142 | |
| 6 | The Supreme Court Speaks | 155 |
| Post-Reconstruction Decisions | 156 | |
| The Right to Keep and Bear Militia Arms: United States v. Miller (1939) | 164 | |
| The Logic of Incorporation and the Fundamental Character of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms | 170 | |
| 7 | State and Federal Judicial Opinions | 179 |
| The Pistol as a Protected Arm | 179 | |
| State Court Decisions since World War II | 184 | |
| To Disarm Felons or to Disarm Citizens? Federal Court Decisions from 1940 | 187 | |
| Afterword: Public Policy and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms | 193 | |
| Notes | 199 | |
| Index | 267 | |
| About the Author | 275 |
As an examination of the original intent of the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, this is a good book. Including citations and references, a thorough analysis of what was implied and intended by this amendment is shown here. It could be a little dry at moments, but there is a lot of material to convey, parsed into periods of history, from Greece to Rome, through English history, and how the understanding of gun rights have changed and been mischaracterized through American history (including the racist origins of gun control in the Civil War and Reconstruction, and during the Civil Rights riots in the 1960s).
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 28, 2008
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Overview
This is an authoritative study of the second amendment, using history and current-day analysis. It is one of the only scholarly works on the subject, but has proven widely accessible. Halbrook traces the origins of the Second Amendment back to ancient Greece and Rome, and then through the “freemen” movement in 18th-century England and France. He demonstrates that the framers of the Constitution were conscious of such history when they drafted the Second Amendment, and that the Second Amendment was clearly ...