Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Mean to Protect?: (Historians at Work S.)

What did the Second Amendment mean to early Americans? The right to bear arms has become one of the most controversial provisions of the American Bill of Rights, but what did the founding generation mean by it? Did they understand it to imply protection of an individual or a collective right to bear arms and what were and are the ramifications of that difference? What ideological or social function did the militia serve in early America? These are just a few of the intriguing questions generated by the controversial body of Second Amendment scholarship over the years. Exploring how late-18th century Americans understood the right to bear arms, the selections expose students to ongoing scholarly debates over this topic, providing an entry into a number of the most important issues in early American historiography: the controversy over republicanism and liberalism, the tension between the states' rights and individual rights, and the place of rights and revolution in the American constitutional experience.

Table of Contents:
Foreword - Preface - A Note for Students - PART ONE: THE DOCUMENT - The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1791 - PART TWO: INTRODUCTION - The Historical Context of the Second Amendment - Historians and the Second Amendment - PART THREE: SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS - Did the Second Amendment Protect an Individual Right to Own Guns?; R.E.Shalhope - Was the Second Amendment Intended to Protect the Militia's Right to Own Guns?; L.D.Cress - Was the Second Amendment Part of the Federalist Effort to Block the Anti-Federalist States' Rights Agenda?; G.Wills - What Role did the Second Amendment Play in the Evolution of American Federalism?; D.Higginbotham - How did the Ideal of the Militia and the Reality of the Militia Differ in Revolutionary America?; E.S.Morgan - What was the Myth of the Armed Citizenry in the United States?; M.A.Bellesiles - Making Connections - Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author :
SAUL CORNELL is associate professor of history at the Ohio State University. Professor Cornell has been an NEH fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture and held the Thomas Jefferson Chair in American Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands as a Fulbright Scholar.