The American Revolutionary Era Origin of the Second Amendment's Clauses

Via Don

David E. Young

The 5/4 split decision in the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia vs Heller case demonstrated a continuing dichotomy in Second Amendment history between relevant period sources, which were largely relied on in the Courts’ decision, and the views of modern historians that backed up the dissent in that case. Justice Breyer’s statement that most of the historians supported the Heller dissent was correct, but that is exactly the problem. The historians’ brief contained numerous errors of fact and failed to present the essential bill of rights related developmental history of the Second Amendment’s clauses. This article contains extensive and essential relevant information that directly conflicts with, or is entirely missing from, the historians’ brief to the Supreme Court.

David E. Young is a Second Amendment scholar, editor of the ratification era document collection, THE ORIGIN OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT, and author of a recent definitive history, THE FOUNDERS’ VIEW OF THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. Mr. Young’s historical research was extensively cited in the 2008 Heller case, as well as the 2001 Emerson decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

I. THE SOURCE OF SECOND AMENDMENT CLAUSES

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

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VI. CONCLUSION

The concept that governments should possess a monopoly of force was not the viewpoint of Americans during the Founding Era. Our states and nation came into being because Americans decided to end British attempts to place the military in control of the civil population of Massachusetts. Americans replaced British military tyranny with civil governments dependent upon and supported by the inherent power of the people themselves. They assured that nothing like a government of force, the opposite of a free government, could ever again be set up in the United States. This was accomplished by simply protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms, thus assuring their ability to self-embody for effective organized defense.

All eight Revolutionary Era Second Amendment predecessors, as well as the three Ratification Era two-clause proposals copied from them, were leading parts of complete Mason Triads. This context indicates the intention of both Second Amendment clauses was to assure the armed civil population’s control over government raised military force for the purpose of preventing oppression and tyranny. The First Congress, by protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms, assured the people of being in a position to self-embody as an effective militia. Indeed, this was the very foundation of the Federalists’ polity as often expressed in their arms related mantra during the ratification struggle. A free state was ensured by such an armed populace because the people were inherently able to prevent the forceful implementation of acts that violated their rights and the Constitution. In the unlikely event such situations of force should ever arise, the people by merely defending themselves would be enforcing the supreme law of the land, and those attempting to use force against the people would be in direct violation of that supreme law, which the people had authorized.

Today, to the extent that the Second Amendment’s language is considered confusing or unclear, one thing is certain. Those applying such descriptions are unfamiliar with or ignoring the Second Amendment’s extensively documented American bill of rights history and period usage of its terms. Our history conclusively demonstrates both Second Amendment clauses are part and parcel of the individual rights protections that constitute the first eight amendments of the U.S. Bill of Rights. All of these provisions resulted from state ratifying convention desires that protections of the existing state bill of rights be added to the U.S. Constitution in a Federal Bill of Rights.⁷⁴ The relevant historical documents indicate that the Second Amendment’s clauses, just like their state bill of rights predecessors, were intended to protect individual rights against misconstruction and abuse of government powers.