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A Well-Regulated Militia
Saul Cornell
The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America
Oxford University Press
August 2006
On Sale: August 1, 2006
288 pages
ISBN: 0195147863
EAN: 9780195147865
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
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.
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