In 2007, for the first time in nearly seventy years, the Supreme Court decided to hear a case involving the Second Amendment. The resulting decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) was the first time the Court declared a firearms restriction to be unconstitutional on the basis of the Second Amendment. It was followed two years later by a similar decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago, and in 2022, the Court further expanded its support for Second Amendment rights in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen—a decision whose far-reaching implications are still being unraveled.To Trust the People with Arms explores the remarkable and complex legal history of how the right to bear arms was widely accepted during the nation’s founding, was near extinction in the late twentieth century, and is now experiencing a rebirth in the Supreme Court in the twenty-first century. Robert J. Cottrol and Brannon P. Denning link the right to bear arms with other major themes in American history. Prompted by the eighteenth-century belief that arms played a vital role in preserving the liberties of the citizen, the Second Amendment met many challenges in the nation’s history. Among the most acute of these were racism, racial violence, and the extension of the right to bear arms to African Americans and other marginalized groups. The development of modern firearms and twentieth-century urbanization also challenged traditional notions concerning the value of an armed population. Cottrol and Denning make a particularly important contribution linking the nation’s participation in the wars of the twentieth century and the strengthening of American gun culture. Most of all, they give a nuanced and sophisticated legal history that engages legal realism, different varieties of originalism, and the role of chance and accident in history. To Trust the People with Arms integrates history, politics, and law in an interdisciplinary way to illustrate the roles that guns and the right to keep and bear arms have played in American history, culture, and law.

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.

"A revised and updated edition of Halbrook's 1984 book discussing the Second Amendment and the individual right to bear arms"--Provided by publisher.

Many strongly and dogmatically believe the Second Amendment to be an individual right. Many others just as strongly and dogmatically believe the Second Amendment to be a collective right. Therefore the book title seems to state a promise too good to be true or impossible to fulfill. However the book thoroughly, fairly, and clearly presents the relevant facts such that the promise is fulfilled. The text traces the legal basis for the contradictory positions in a readable fashion. It shows the intended meaning of the Second Amendment and documents the reasoning of those who disagree. Also included is a discussion on the philosophical foundations for each of the positions. The last few chapters present some of the Second Amendment's implications on the country's legal and social structures. Following each chapter are human interest accounts of the use of firearms. The appendices provide extensive resource materials (relevant court decisions, constitution convention notes, federal law, Constitution letters of ratification, etc.) for further study and for verification that the book's handling of the Second Amendment is fair, accurate and complete. The appendices comprise a basic Second Amendment Reference Library "for the people."

Inquires, first, to what extent, if at all, do the militias pose a threat to public safety and the Fed. Government? Also, to what extent are Americans joining the militias because they feel, rightly or wrongly, that the Fed. Government poses a threat to their constitutional rights? There are some 224 militias operating in the U.S., active in 39 states and rumored to be present in other States. Witnesses: Robert Bryant, FBI; James Brown, ATF; Fred Mills, Missouri State Highway Patrol; Richard Romley, Maricopa County att., Phoenix, AZ; John Bohlman, Musselshell County att., Roundup, MT; and other counsels from Montana, Michigan and Ohio.