A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America

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Saul Cornell (Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University)

A Well-Regulated Militia

The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America

Saul Cornell (Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
27 November 2008

History of the Americas; Military history; Legal history; Social law; Licensing, gaming & club law

"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."

By: Saul Cornell (Associate Professor of History Associate Professor of History Ohio State University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 152mm, Width: 231mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9780195341034
ISBN 10: 0195341031
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 27 November 2008
Audience: College/higher education , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Saul Cornell is Professor of History at Ohio State University and Director of the Second Amendment Research Center at the John Glenn Institute. An authority on constitutional history and especially on the Second Amendment, he is the author of The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America and editor of Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect?

Reviews for A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America

This intelligent, carefully rendered history of gun policy in the United States...is challenging but essential reading for scholars, specialised undergraduates, and readers interested in law, criminal justice, and public affairs. * Library Journal *