Monday is Bill of Rights Day. It is also the day for the Second Amendment Book Bomb, for Stephen Halbrook's outstanding new book The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms.
After the success of the Ron Paul "money bombs" last fall (when Paul supporters all made donations on a single day), Ron Paul supporters used the same concept this spring to launch a "book bomb," which turned Rep. Paul's book into the #1 best-seller on Amazon.com, and sent it to the top of the N.Y. Times bestseller list. Now, Dr. Paul is leading the campaign for a book bomb for another author.
On Monday, Stephen Halbrook will be speaking at the Independent Institute, in Oakland, California. (The Independent Institute is not related to the Independence Institute, which is where I work, in Golden, Colorado.) They are launching the book bomb, with an ambitious objective of one million sales for Halbrook's book.
I read the Halbrook book when it was in page proofs earlier this year. It is by far the best historical examination of the Second Amendment in the Founding Era. No matter how advanced your knowledge of the Second Amendment, you will learn a great deal from this book. Alan Gura used the book extensively in preparing his brief in D.C. v. Heller.
The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms is an excellent gift for anyone you know who is interested in the Second Amendment or legal history. It is also a fine gift for your local school library.
Over the last 30 years, Stephen Halbrook has done more than any other scholar to bring to light the history of the Second Amendment. He has a 3-0 record in the Supreme Court, and in Heller, he wrote the Congressional amicus brief on behalf of 55 members of the Senate, the Senate President (Richard Cheney), and 250 members of the House of Representatives.
From the Book Bomb link, you can learn more about the book, and have the opportunity to order the book from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or BooksAMillion.com.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Twelve Days of Christmas: Still time to buy "The Founders' Second Amendment":
- Second Amendment Book Bomb on Monday:
Obligatory "People's Front of Judea" reference . . .
If not his book won't be worth reading.
Since that question has been debated for decades my guess is he won't present an argument you haven't heard before. From what David wrote I assume Gura used Halbrook's debating points in his successful SCOTUS brief.
Surprisingly in contradistinction from say the abortion debate actually a few minds have been changed. Evidently both Tribe and Dershowitz now accept the individual right theory and say it would require a constitutional amendment to make it a collective right.
But if you don't read the book how will you know if he was able to make that fine distinction?
If you are interested in the topic, and it makes a difference to buy it on the 15th, then go ahead and do that.
Another excellent work on the same topic (although covering somewhat different ground) is David Young's "The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms." Buy that one, too.
These books, as well as our brief, explain (among many other things) the relationship between the militia clause and the individual right. It is the same relationship understood by the people who enacted the Second Amendment, as reflected by the original public meaning of the text.
Only last couple of decades perhaps? The principle behind the 2A was never questioned until the NRA started distorting it.
Seriously, what principle is that? Your question assumes your take on the 2A is correct. Might as well have asked "Have you stopped doing illegal things yet?"
The text of Declaration of Independence demonstrates that the idea of "consent of the governed" formed a great part of the worldview of the Founders, and that the king was not above law; consequently, all citizens could be called upon to form a militia to resist despotism and tyranny. That idea undergirds the 2A, at least how the Founders understood it.
I think the odd thing is that many people believe regular citizens owning a military weapon is scary. Why not? Political tyrants everywhere co-opt the military forces to do their bidding. To resist that, common folks need the skills as tank drivers/pilots/etc. to resist should, heaven forbid, it come to that. Yes, our tech. is much more specialized, but I see no reason why if a billionaire wants to own some F-18's/tanks/ect. and have a small band of privately trained pilots/tank drivers why he/she can't do so, keeping it maintained in the extreme event history repeats itself. Our Founders owned military weaponry. To think otherwise tends to smell of gov't elitism, which is a step on the road towards tyranny, particularly in our republic.
Which principle would that be?
The notion that the 2nd amendment was somehow tied to a govt organization didn't come from the NRA; it was invented in the last century to push gun control. The individual right notion, which the NRA does push, didn't come from the NRA either - it came from the folks who wrote the 2nd and their contemporaries.
Private purposes may well include belonging to an armed organized militia, unless one somehow thinks that "organized" only applies to govt arms.
On the off-chance that Aldridge thinks that the 2nd empowers states (such as CA) to have militias, perhaps he'll explain its relationship to the last paragraph in Article I, which says that such states can not keep troops without consent of congress. Did the 2nd repeal that restriction?
If the 2nd allows state militias, can Idaho issue NFA weapons to its militia members whether or not the Feds are happy with said members having NFA weapons? If not, what does the 2nd let a state do with its militia that it couldn't otherwise do?
Totally agree, but that's exactly the type of argument the left uses to dismiss the right as "wingnuts" and "crazy".
One might argue that flies in ointment might, at times, serve constructive purposes. But it's almost never beneficial to the flies, and the flies simply don't have the opportunity to know better. You do.
Regarding the militia, do you understand the points of analysis offered by Gura and his team? It's a very useful summary, and available at dcguncase.com under "Respondent's Brief." If you do understand, let's discuss the points and their merits.
Let me give you a semi-educated lay-person's take on the distinction between the militia and individuals owning guns for private purposes? It's far simpler than you seem to make it to be.
The 2A guarantees that our right to arms shall not be infringed by government. In other words, they cannot take them away, and they are not to make owning and using arms difficult, expensive, or inconvenient (look up "infringed"). It also declares a purpose for our being armed - a very important purpose. This purpose is that the militia (you, me, Kopel, Gura, Volokh, whomever ... pretty much every responsible adult) exists to secure community, state, and nation during a time of need. We are the unorganized militia mentioned in the Federal Code. It would, of course, necessarily become more organized when the need for action arose. The 2A protects individual ownership of guns for many purposes, including individual and family/home defense from common criminals. But of course one (perhaps the most important) purpose is the militia. Militias are destroyed or rendered impotent by disarming the people. This really boils down to the fact that individual and community/national safety and security are intractably linked. We are safe because our communities and nation are safe ... and vice-versa. The militia purpose and the private purposes couple beautifully.
"The principle behind the 2A was never questioned until the NRA started distorting it."
There is a time dilation problem in J. Aldridge's statement about which he seems completely clueless, and this is in addition to his suggestion that the NRA is wrong about the intent of the Second Amendment. My research on the Second Amendment's history, which was cited extensively in Alan Gura's Heller respondent brief and in Justice Scalia's decision, has nothing whatsoever to do with the NRA. The NRA came into existence in 1871 and the Second Amendment was ratified 79 years earlier. This research is completely self directed, self financed, and based on the ratification period sources (prior to the existence of the NRA). I even publish my own books so that not another soul has any say in what is contained in them. The period I study ends with notification of the December 15, 1791 ratification of the U.S. Bill of Rights amendments by Secretary of State Jefferson in early 1792.
J. Aldridge would do well to actually read Stephen Halbrook's latest book as it is excellent and contains a large amount of hitherto unknown historical information. The same advice goes for my new book The Founders View of the Right to Bear Arms, which was published five months earlier. It provides every detail of the Second Amendment's development as a private rights protecting Bill of Rights provision, and it distinguishes its history from that of the proposed militia clause amendments so often confused with it (even by professional historians). If J. Aldrige is not familiar with the self-embodying armed association that George Mason called a well regulated militia, or with Mason Triads, or the Federalist and Antifederalist Mantras from the Ratification Era, he has a lot of catching up to do on Second Amendment history.
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