Download or read book The Militia and the Right to Arms or How the Second Amendment Fell Silent written by H. Richard Uviller and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-20 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." —Amendment II, United States Constitution The Second Amendment is regularly invoked by opponents of gun control, but H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel argue the amendment has nothing to contribute to debates over private access to firearms. In The Militia and the Right to Arms, or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent, Uviller and Merkel show how postratification history has sapped the Second Amendment of its meaning. Starting with a detailed examination of the political principles of the founders, the authors build the case that the amendment's second clause (declaring the right to bear arms) depends entirely on the premise set out in the amendment's first clause (stating that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state). The authors demonstrate that the militia envisioned by the framers of the Bill of Rights in 1789 has long since disappeared from the American scene, leaving no lineal descendants. The constitutional right to bear arms, Uviller and Merkel conclude, has evaporated along with the universal militia of the eighteenth century. Using records from the founding era, Uviller and Merkel explain that the Second Amendment was motivated by a deep fear of standing armies. To guard against the debilitating effects of militarism, and against the ultimate danger of a would-be Caesar at the head of a great professional army, the founders sought to guarantee the existence of well-trained, self-armed, locally commanded citizen militia, in which service was compulsory. By its very existence, this militia would obviate the need for a large and dangerous regular army. But as Uviller and Merkel describe the gradual rise of the United States Army and the National Guard over the last two hundred years, they highlight the nation's abandonment of the militia ideal so dear to the framers. The authors discuss issues of constitutional interpretation in light of radically changed social circumstances and contrast their position with the arguments of a diverse group of constitutional scholars including Sanford Levinson, Carl Bogus, William Van Alstyne, and Akhil Reed Amar. Espousing a centrist position in the polarized arena of Second Amendment interpretation, this book will appeal to those wanting to know more about the amendment's relevance to the issue of gun control, as well as to those interested in the constitutional and political context of America's military history.

Download or read book A Well Regulated Militia written by Saul Cornell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century. A Well Regulated Militia not only restores the lost meaning of the original Second Amendment, but it provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns. For anyone interested in understanding the great American gun debate, this is a must read.

Download or read book Constitution written by United States and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Arming America written by Michael A. Bellesiles and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on archival material to challenge popular misconceptions about the American belief system about arms rights, tracing "gun fever" to its European origins while documenting the rarity of firearms in early America as well as the technological advances and events that made guns an integral part of American life. Original.

Download or read book The Second written by Carol Anderson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception. In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans. From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless--revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished. Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don't), their life--as surely as Philando Castile's, Tamir Rice's, Alton Sterling's--may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson's penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.

Download or read book The Founders Second Amendment written by Stephen P. Halbrook and published by Ivan R. Dee. This book was released on 2008-04-18 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms? Or is this power vested solely in government? Recent years have seen a sea change in scholarship on the Second Amendment. Beginning in the 1960s, a revisionist view emerged that individuals had a "right" to bear arms only in militia service—a limited, collective right. But in the late 1980s a handful of scholars began producing an altogether persuasive analysis that changed thinking on the matter, so that today, even in canonical textbooks, bearing arms is acknowledged as an individual right. Stephen Halbrook's The Founders' Second Amendment is the first book-length account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders' own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions.

Download or read book The Second Amendment written by Larry Gerber and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has the most guns per capita of any country in the world. Many Americans value the right to bear arms, which they believe is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Others believe that the Second Amendment only guarantees the right for organized militias to own guns. This book surveys the history of the Second Amendment and gun ownership in the United States, and explores how the amendment continues to affect us today.

Download or read book Quilici V Village of Morton Grove written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Right to Keep and Bear Arms written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Positive Second Amendment written by Joseph Blocher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the first comprehensive post-Heller account of the Second Amendment as constitutional law - dispelling many myths along the way.

Download or read book A People Armed and Free written by Reynolds J. D. Jack and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2003 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story, as told by a NYC elementary school teacher, of the thirty years he taught in public schools. It tells of the joy, heartache and frustration that teachers deal with on a day-to-day, year-to-year basis. You will laugh at the responses that children make, the insight they sometimes possess and the gentle hearts they still have at their age. You will also read of the frustrations experienced by teachers as they deal with the bureaucracy and politics of people who have no idea of what goes on in a classroom and many times make decisions that are unrealistic. It may also reveal to parents what REALLY goes on in a classroom!

Download or read book A Well Regulated Militia written by Saul Cornell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong. Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century. A Well Regulated Militia not only restores the lost meaning of the original Second Amendment, but it provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns. For anyone interested in understanding the great American gun debate, this is a must read.

Download or read book No Guarantee of a Gun written by John Massaro and published by Author House. This book was released on 2009-12-03 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The information in this book proves by means of credible and irrefutable documentary evidence that the Supreme Court's decision on June 26, 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the Second Amendment protects the right of an individual to possess and carry weapons, was incorrect. And the information in this book forms the foundation of what would have been the correct decision in that case. Second Amendment commentary and case law are incorrect. But unfortunately, they are relied upon by today's scholars and jurists. However, this book, written in plain English instead of the legalese that many persons find unappealing about books pertaining to legal subjects, takes the bold step of disproving these incorrect authorities on the most controversial and puzzling provision of the United States Constitution, and it meets that challenge. While other books on the Second Amendment rely largely on incorrect commentary and case law, this book uses credible and irrefutable documentary evidence to uncover the substance of the Second Amendment. By proving that Second Amendment commentary and case law are incorrect, this book will become both the preeminent treatise on the Second Amendment and a landmark book in the field of Constitutional law. And while gun control has been a highly controversial issue for a long time, the debate on gun control has been improperly bifurcated into what is good public policy and what is Constitutional. This book eliminates the Constitutional component of that debate so that the debate can be focused solely on what is good public policy. Other books written on the Second Amendment propose incorrect theories or attempt to reconcile its two supposed clauses. However, this book is the best book ever written on the Second Amendment because it does what no other book has ever done. It uncovers, by means of documentary evidence instead of mere argument, the true meanings of the terms A well regulated Militia, people, keep, and bear arms.

Download or read book The Second Amendment written by Kirsten W. Larson and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2017-08 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the causes, writing, and effects of the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which guarantees American citizens the right to bear arms. Includes critical thinking questions, photographs, a glossary, and further resources.

Download or read book Guns Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea written by Joshua Horwitz and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The NRA steadfastly maintains that the 30,000 gun-related deaths and 300,000 assaults with firearms in the United States every year are a small price to pay to guarantee freedom. As former NRA President Charlton Heston put it, "freedom isn't free." And when gun enthusiasts talk about Constitutional liberties guaranteed by the Second Amendment, they are referring to freedom in a general sense, but they also have something more specific in mind---freedom from government oppression. They argue that the only way to keep federal authority in check is to arm individual citizens who can, if necessary, defend themselves from an aggressive government. In the past decade, this view of the proper relationship between government and individual rights and the insistence on a role for private violence in a democracy has been co-opted by the conservative movement. As a result, it has spread beyond extreme "militia" groups to influence state and national policy. In Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, Josh Horwitz and Casey Anderson reveal that the proponents of this view base their argument on a deliberate misreading of history. The Insurrectionist myth has been forged by twisting the facts of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States, the denial of civil rights to African-Americans after the Civil War, and the rise of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. Here, Horwitz and Anderson set the record straight. Then, challenging the proposition that more guns equal more freedom, they expose Insurrectionism---not government oppression---as the true threat to freedom in the U.S. today. Joshua Horwitz received a law degree from George Washington University and is currently a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. He has spent nearly two decades working on gun violence prevention issues. He lives in Arlington, Virginia. Casey Anderson holds a law degree from Georgetown University and is currently a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C. He has served in senior staff positions with the U.S. Congress, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Americans for Gun Safety. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Download or read book The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment written by David C. Williams and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Williams offers a new reading of the Second Amendment suggesting that it guarantees to individuals a right to arms only insofar as they are part of a united & consensual people so that their uprising can be a unified revolution rather than a civil war.

Download or read book To Keep and Bear Arms written by Joyce Lee Malcolm and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work illuminates the historical facts behind the current debate about gun-related violence, the Brady Bill and the NRA, including the original meaning and intentions behind the right to "bear arms". It traces its roots to the legacy of English law, leading directly to the Second Amendment