The Bill of Rights was intended to inform the ordinary citizen of his or her rights. Its meaning is not a monopoly of the governmental entities whose powers it was intended to limit. St. George Tucker said it best in his 1803 treatise, the first ever published on the Constitution, as follows:
A bill of rights may be considered, not only as intended to give law, and assign limits to a government about to be established, but as giving information to the people. By reducing speculative truths to fundamental laws, every man of the meanest capacity and understanding may learn his own rights, and know when they are violated . . . .47
By knowing when one’s rights are violated, the citizen may signify his or her displeasure through mechanisms such as the ballot box and the jury box, and may resort to speech, the press, assembly, and petition to denounce the evil. As the experiences of the American Revolution proved, the right to keep and bear arms serves as the ultimate check that the Founders hoped would dissuade persons at the helm of state from seeking to establish tyranny. In hindsight, it would be difficult to quarrel with the success of the Founders’ vision.
NOTES
PREFACE
1. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 939 n.2 (1997) (Thomas, J., concurring), citing in part Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 162; Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984; reprinted, 1994, 2000 by The Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif.). See also William Van Alstyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms, 43 Duke L. J. 1236 (1994); Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, 101 Yale L. J. 1193 (1992); Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, 80 Geo. L. J. 309 (1991); Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L. J. 637 (1989); Don Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204 (1983).
2. See, e.g., the scores of articles cited in Lawrence Tribe, American Constitutional Law (New York: Foundation Press, 3rd ed., 2000), 897-98 n.211; David B. Kopel, The Second Amendment in the Nineteenth Century, BYU L. Rev., No. 4, 1359, 1362-65 (1998). Many more have been published since then.
3. Stephen P. Halbrook, A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989).
4. Stephen P. Halbrook, Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866–1876 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1998).
5. To be sure, there are many noteworthy contributions to the subject. See Robert H. Churchill, Gun Regulation, the Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: The Legal Context of the Second Amendment, 25 Law & History Rev. 139 (2007) (with critical comments by David Konig, William Merkel, and Saul Cornell); Robert E. Shalhope, The Armed Citizen in the Early Republic, 49 Law and Contemp. Probs. 125 (1986); Nelson Lund, The Second Amendment, Political Liberty, and the Right to Self-Preservation, 39 Ala. L. Rev. 130 (1987); Lawrence D. Cress, An Armed Community: The Origin and Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms, 71 Jour. of American History 22 (1984).
INTRODUCTION
1. E.g., Forum: Rethinking the Second Amendment, 25 Law & History Rev., Issue 1 (2007).
2. See, e.g., Symposium on the Second Amendment: Fresh Looks, 76 Chi.–Kent L. Rev. 1 (2000), revised and reprinted as Carl Bogus ed., The Second Amendment in Law and History (New York: New Press, 2001).
3. Saul Cornell, A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); David Konig, The Second Amendment: A Missing Transatlantic Context for the Historical Meaning of the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms, 22 Law & History Rev. 119 (2004).
4. Compare Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) (a book that was withdrawn from publication) with Robert H. Churchill, Gun Ownership in Early America: A Survey of Manuscript Militia Returns, 60 William & Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. (2003), 615.
5. William Blackstone, Commentaries, St. George Tucker ed. (Philadelphia: William Young Birch and Abraham Small, 1803), vol. 1, at App. 308.
CHAPTER 1
1. Boston Gazette, September 26, 1768, at 3, cols. 1–2. Reprinted in, e.g., Virginia Gazette, October 27, 1768, at 2, col. 3; Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), October 20, 1768, at 3, col. 1; Georgia Gazette (Savannah), November 2, 1768, at 1, col. 1.
2. Sidney Kobre, The Development of the Colonial Newspaper (Pittsburgh: The Colonial Press, 1944), 118–20.
3. See Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991).
4. Bernhard Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 1766–1775 (New York: Free Press, 1975; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 81, 401 n.3; John R. Alden, General Gage in America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 160.
5. Boston Post Post-Boy & Advertiser, September 19, 1768, at 1, col. 1.
6. Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1865), 81; William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1888), 212–13.
7. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1805; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988), vol. 1, at 37.
8. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, 212–13.
9. Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, 85–86.
10. Boston Chronicle, September 19, 1768, at 363, col. 2; Boston Post Post-Boy & Advertiser, September 19, 1768, at 1, col. 3; New York Journal, or General Advertiser, Supplement, September 24, 1768, at 1, col. 3.
11. An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, 1 W. & M., Sess. 2, cl.2 (1689).
12. The act of May 14, 1645, provided in part:
That all inhabitants, as well seamen as others, are to have armes in their houses fit for service, with powder, bullets, match, as other souldiers, & the fishermen, shipcarpenters, (the deacons are hereby exempted from watches & wards,) & others, not exempted by lawe, shall watch or provide a sufficient man in their roome, & to traine twice a year, according to the order.
Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff ed. (Boston: W. White, 1853–54), vol. 2, at 119.
13. William Gerard Hamilton to Gerard Calcraft, February 1767, Chatham Correspondence, in Frank A. Mumby, George III and The American Revolution (London: Constable & Co., 1924), 173.
14. An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, 1 W. & M., Sess. 2, cl.2 (1689).
15. Boston Post Post-Boy & Advertiser, September 19, 1768, at 1, col. 1.
16. Pennsylvania Gazette, September 29, 1768, at 2, col. 1.
17. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 37.
18. Ibid., vol. 1, at 38.
19. See John Phillip Reid, Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority of Rights (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986); Colin Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977); Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
20. Boston Gazette, September 26, 1768, at 3, cols. 1–2.
21. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 82–83.
22. Boston Evening Post, October 3, 1768, at 3, col. 2.
23. Kobre, Development of Colonial Newspaper, 114–15.
24. Essex Gazette (Salem), October 4, 1768, at 40, col. 3. This was apparently published first in Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette, but the issue is missing from the Library of Congress collection.
25. Boston Gazette, October 3, 1768, at 2, col. 2.
26. Warren, History of the Americ
an Revolution, vol. 1, at 32, 350 (text of letter).
27. David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitken, 1789; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990), vol. 1, at 73.
28. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 34–35.
29. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 54–57.
30. The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775, Clarence E. Carter ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1931–33), vol. 2, at 68–69.
31. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 67–68.
32. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 35.
33. Ibid.; see also Ramsay, History of American Revolution, vol. 1, at 74.
34. Letter of July 30, 1768, in Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 2, at 72–73.
35. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 57–58.
36. Ibid., 58–61.
37. Gage to Hillsborough, September 7, 1768, in Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 191, and vol. 2, at 69.
38. Gage to Hillsborough, September 10, 1768, in Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 195.
39. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 39.
40. New York Journal, October 6, 1768, at 2, col. 1.
41. Ibid.
42. New York Journal, November 10, 1768, at 3, col. 1.
43. New York Journal, October 27, 1768, at 2, col. 3.
44. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 83.
45. Ibid. 83, 402 n.14.
46. Boston Evening Post, November 21, 1768, at 2, col. 3.
47. Massachusetts Gazette, January 26, 1769, at 1, col. 1.
48. Boston Under Military Rule [1768–1769] as Revealed in a Journal of the Times, Oliver Morton Dickerson, comp. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1971), xiii–ix.
49. William Cobett, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: T. C. Hansard, 1813), vol. 16, at 469.
50. Proceedings of December 15, 1768, in ibid., vol. 16, at 478.
51. Boston Chronicle, September 19, 1768, at 363, col. 2; Boston Post Post-Boy & Advertiser, September 19, 1768, at 1, col. 1.
52. Boston Gazette, January 30, 1769, at 2, col. 1 (signed “Shippen”); The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), vol. 1, at 299. For a similar article, see New York Journal, Supplement, April 6, 1769, no. 1363, at 2, col. 1.
53. New York Journal, February 2, 1769, at 2, col. 2.
54. Boston Gazette, October 17, 1768, at 2, col. 3.
55. Boston Gazette, March 6, 1769, at 1, col. 3.
56. Boston Evening-Post, October 24, 1768, at 2, cols. 2–3.
57. Massachusetts Gazette, August 3, 1769, at 1, col. 1.
58. Massachusetts Gazette, June 7, 1769, at 4, col. 1.
59. Massachusetts Gazette, February 23, 1769, at 1, col. 1.
60. Boston Gazette, February 27, 1769, at 3, col. 1; Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. 1, at 317.
61. Ibid., vol. 1, at 317–18. Adams is quoting verbatim from Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. 1, at 140–41, 143–44.
62. Ibid, vol. 1, at 318.
63. New York Journal, March 23, 1769, at 2, col. 3. Similar statements made in Commons debate, which are quoted above, may be found in Cobert, Parliamentary History of England, vol. 16, at 469, 478.
64. New York Journal, Supplement, April 13, 1769, at 1, col. 3.
65. Pennsylvania Gazette, April 20, 1769, at 1, col. 1.
66. New York Journal, Supplement, April 6, 1769, Number 1370.
67. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 83.
68. Ibid., 280–81.
69. John Adams, Legal Papers (Cambridge: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1965), vol. 2, at 326.
70. Ibid., vol. 2, at 331.
71. Ibid., quoting William Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, vol. 1, at 71.
72. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 281.
73. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 41–42.
74. Massachusetts Gazette, June 15, 1769, at 1, col. 2; Pennsylvania Gazette, June 29, 1769, at 1, col. 1.
75. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 42–44.
76. Ibid., vol. 1, at 49–50.
77. John Clark Ridpath, James Otis the Pre-Revolutionist (Indypublish.com 2002), text online at http://www.samizdat.com/warren/jamesotis.html (accessed December 9, 2007).
78. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 83–86, 282–83.
79. Ibid., 86–87.
80. Warren, History of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 54–55; Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 89.
81. Gage to Hillsborough, April 10, 1770, in Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 251.
82. John Adams, Legal Papers, vol. 3, at 242.
83. Ibid., vol. 3, at 149.
84. Ibid., vol. 3, at 274.
85. John Adams, Legal Papers, vol. 3, at 149.
86. Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. 2, at 119.
87. John Adams, Legal Papers, vol. 3, at 248.
88. Ibid., vol. 3, at 285.
89. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 87–88.
90. John Adams, Legal Papers, vol. 1, at 160.
91. Ibid., vol. 1, at 160, n.16.
92. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, xlii–xliv.
93. New York Journal, April 8, 1773, at 2, col. 3.
94. See Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
95. Massachusettensis, “To All Nations of Men,” Massachusetts Spy (Boston), November 18, 1773, reprinted in Charles S. Hyneman & Donald S. Lutz, American Political Writing During the Founding Era 1760–1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), vol. 1, at 213.
96. Ibid., vol. 1, at 191.
97. Ibid., vol. 1, at 194.
98. Ibid., vol. 1, at 197.
99. Ibid., vol. 1, at 192.
100. Ibid., vol. 1, at 198–99.
101. Ibid., vol. 1, at 199–200.
102. Ibid., vol. 1, at 200.
CHAPTER 2
1. Letter of December 18, 1773, in John Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, Esq., of Boston, 1772–1776, Winthrop Sargent ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson & Sons, 1866), 12. All of Andrews’ letters in this collection were to William Barrell, a Philadelphia merchant.
2. Letter of December 1, 1773, in ibid., 12.
3. David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitken, 1789; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990), vol. 1, at 99; Bernhard Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 1766–1775 (New York: Free Press, 1975; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 136–39.
4. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1805; reprinted, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988), vol. 1, at 79; Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 200–2.
5. Dartmouth to Gage, April 9, 1774, The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775, Clarence E. Carter ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1931–33), vol. 2, at 158–59.
6. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 123.
7. Dartmouth to Gage, June 3, 1774, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 2, at 164.
8. Boston Gazette, January 24, 1774, at 1, col. 3.
9. John Hancock, An Oration; Delivered March 5, 1774, at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston (Boston: Edes & Gill, 1774), 14–15.
10. New York Journal, March 31, 1774, at 1, col. 3.
11. Albert Matthews, Notes on the Massachusetts Royal Commissions, 1681–1775 (Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson & Son, 1913), 86–87.
12. Letter of May 18, 1774, in Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, 15.
13. Knollenberg, Growth of the American Revolution, 196.
14. Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, 19–20.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Robert P. Richmond, Powder Alarm, 1774 (Princeton, N.J.: Auerbach Publishers, 1971), 42.
18. “At an Assembly of the Inhabitants of Hanover, Lancaster County,” June 4, 1774, quoted in Joe D. Huddleston, Colonial Riflemen in the American Revolution (York, Pa.: George Shumway, 1978), 15.
19. “From the South Carolina Gazette, of August 23, 1774,” Virginia Gazette, September 27, 1774, at 1, cols. 2–3.
20. Boston Gazette, August 29, 1774, Supplement, at 1, col. 1.
21. Gage to Dartmouth, August 27, 1774, in Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 366.
22. Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, 34.
23. Albert Matthews, “Documents Relating to the Last Meetings of the Massachusetts Royal Council, 1774–1776,” Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (February 1937), vol. 32, at 460, 475.
24. Ibid., vol. 32, at 475–76.
25. Ibid., vol. 32, at 476.
26. Boston Gazette, September 5, 1774, at 3, col. 2.
27. Massachusetts Spy, September 8, 1774, at 3, col. 3; also in Pennsylvania Gazette, September 14, 1774, at 2, col. 3.
28. Matthews, “Documents Relating to the Council,” vol. 3, at 476 ff.
29. Newport Mercury (Rhode Island), September 19, 1774, at 1, col. 3.
30. Oliver to Dartmouth, December 9, 1774, in Matthews, “Documents Relating to the Council,” vol. 3, at 492.
31. Ibid., vol. 3, at 494.
32. A 1792 act, which likely stemmed from colonial legislation, required approval of the fire ward for transportation of gunpowder in the streets of Boston “in any quantity, exceeding twenty five pounds, being the quantity allowed by law to be kept in shops for sale.” Perpetual Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1801), vol. 2, at 144.
33. Marie L. Aheam, The Rhetoric of War: Training Day, the Militia, and the Military Sermon (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), 149–50.
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