3 ms·
To be fair to the Founders, they would not have expected the states to ban guns, as their historical context was that the states needed citizens to have guns to
by sageikosa 13y ago
To be fair to the Founders, they would not have expected the states to ban guns, as their historical context was that the states needed citizens to have guns to be reasonably certain they (the states) could deal with threats; not least of which was "foreign invasion" like the War of Independence. At the time of the ratification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the states were more concerned with a central (and remote) government having too much power over them than they were with its citizens running amok.
- hga 13y agoJust got my revised and updated edition of Halbrook's groundbreaking That Every Man Be Armed, and on pages 69-70 he confirms that prior to the conditional ratification of the Constitution, 7 of the 13 states had declarations acknowledging the RKBA, and 2 that didn't "later demanded protection for the right to keep and bear arms in the new federal Constitution." He goes on to add that "with the defeat of the British [for whom gun grabbing was a major strategy and what sparked the war], no one feared that the natural and common-law right to have arms was any longer in danger."