The Founders’ Second Amendment

A government strong enough to defend a free state — and a people armed enough to keep it free. The Founders’ Second Amendment resolves that tension by returning to the record the Framers left. From 1768 warnings that Bostonians would be disarmed to General Thomas Gage’s confiscations after Lexington and Concord, Halbrook follows the paper trail that led colonial Americans to distrust standing armies and insist on “the right of the people” to keep and bear arms. The Founders’ Second Amendment appears in the sources themselves: not as interpretation, but as documented inheritance.

Halbrook’s method is simple and bracing: let the Founders speak. He assembles newspapers, correspondence, and convention journals; tracks Virginia’s tipping point under Patrick Henry and George Mason; and shows James Madison translating state proposals into federal text. Early interpreters — Tench Coxe and St. George Tucker — write of “their private arms,” while Congress debates the Militia Act of 1792, presuming household weapons and public duty.

The book maps the constitutional fight once the Philadelphia draft omitted a bill of rights. Pennsylvania’s Minority demanded language that “the people have a right to bear arms”; New Hampshire warned Congress must never disarm any peaceable person; Virginia ratified on the promise of amendments. In Congress, the Senate refused to narrow the right to “the common defense,” and proposals to augment state militia powers failed — clarifying that the Amendment protects a popular right even as it recognizes a militia.

Closing with linguistic analysis — “right of the people” across the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments — Halbrook frames modern litigation, including District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), without turning the Founders into symbols. The Founders’ Second Amendment equips readers with the documents, actors, and arguments to navigate current law and policy. The updated edition includes a new foreword by Nelson Lund, situating Halbrook’s work within today’s constitutional battles. (2019ed, 450pp, pb)