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.

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.

"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." Legal historians, analysts, judges and commentators have long disagreed about the original scope and intent of these words, making up the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Individual right theorists interpret it as protecting the personal privilege to own and carry firearms, while collective right theorists interpret it as only protecting the privilege of a collective society to bear arms in relation to militia service. This book examines the contentions of both groups and concludes that the amendment is meant only to protect the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms" for the purpose of defending the country in a militia force against standing foreign or domestic armies. In crafting his argument, the author examines the Second Amendment in exacting detail. On June 28, 2010, the book was cited by Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in a dissenting opinion for the landmark case McDonald v. City of Chicago.

Stephen P. 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. Mr. Halbrook investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the passing of the Founders' generation. His book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the arguments behind the drafting and adoption of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the men who created it.

Widely acclaimed at the time of its publication, the life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights. At a time of increasing gun violence in America, Waldman’s book provoked a wide range of discussion. This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men—who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present. As the country spread to the Western frontier, violence spread too. But through it all, gun control was abundant. In the twentieth century, with Prohibition and gangsterism, the first federal control laws were passed. In all four separate times the Supreme Court ruled against a constitutional right to own a gun. The present debate picked up in the 1970s—part of a backlash to the liberal 1960s and a resurgence of libertarianism. A newly radicalized NRA entered the campaign to oppose gun control and elevate the status of an obscure constitutional provision. In 2008, in a case that reached the Court after a focused drive by conservative lawyers, the US Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual right to gun ownership. Famous for his theory of “originalism,” Justice Antonin Scalia twisted it in this instance to base his argument on contemporary conditions. In The Second Amendment: A Biography, Michael Waldman shows that our view of the amendment is set, at each stage, not by a pristine constitutional text, but by the push and pull, the rough and tumble of political advocacy and public agitation.

A hot button issue that is in the news daily, the right to bear arms is one of Americans’ most provincial and cherished rights. There are more guns per capita in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Through engaging and enlightening text, the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, is studied in-depth. Analyzing the varying views on the amendment, students will get the opportunity to learn about the different interpretations of the amendment. The history of the amendment, as well as its creators, supporters, and detractors are studied thoroughly. Primary source documents allow readers to examine the amendments themselves and come up with their own conclusions. Full-color and black-and-white photos help students better understand the Bill of Rights and its creation. Further reading and sidebars encourage students to explore the amendments further, and a glossary helps students master new vocabulary.