The Founders' Second Amendment

by Stephen P. Halbrook

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 scholarly interpretation of the Second Amendment. Beginning in the 1960s, a revisionist view emerged that individuals had a "right" to bear arms only in militia service. But in the late 1980s, a handful of scholars began producing a persuasive analysis that changed thinking on the issue, so that today, even in most canonical textbooks, bearing arms is acknowledged as an individual right.

Stephen P. Halbrook, a leading scholar on the Second Amendment, investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through the adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the passing of the Founders' generation. His research – based on the Founders' own statements as revealed in newspapers, correspondence, debates and resolutions – 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.