Abstract: Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some 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. This book gives a history of this bitter controversy. It 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. The book 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 Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern “individual right” view emerged only in the 19th century. The modern debate, the book argues, has its roots in the 19th 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, it 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 for the next century. The book aims to provide a clear historical road map that charts how America has arrived at its current impasse over guns.

Keywords: Second Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, gun control, militia, constitutional history, Founding Fathers, civic rights, Anti-Federalists, Republicans, Democrats