As an extremely pro-gun patriot, even I will admit that the exact wording of the Second Amendment clouds it’s intent. No other Amendment seems to bring about as much debate as to it’s exact meaning as the 2nd does. My question is, when did the questions and debates about the meaning of the Second Amendment begin? Most of the Founders lived until the late 1700’s/early 1800’s, and they must have had family/friends that lived even longer. Didn’t anyone get a chance to ask?
WAG: Soon after the Civil War, for three interrelated reasons.
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The post-Civil War period saw the first great surge of urbanization. With larger parts of the population in urban areas, the benefits of gun ownership (hunting, shooting the bear that’s wandered into your house) declined, and the dangers (more people to piss the gun-owner off) increased. This likely caused concern;
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Most Civil War vets took their guns home with them. The increase in gun ownership probably caused concern. Related to this, I’m sure newspaper stories about Dodge City, etc., didn’t make urbanites high on guns; and
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Some military historian help me out on this, but I believe that after the Civil War, the country switched away from the army as a grouping of state regiments, and became more national in character. As the militias became less important, the first phrase of the 2nd Amendment had less weight in may peoples’ minds.
V.
The NRA was started just after the Civil War, because (initially) it was noticed that all these city-boys that went to war didn’t know squat about using firearms. This is probably why the war went on so long; had the better equipped and manned Union Army been just as good of marksmen as their Southern counterparts, it would’ve been over sooner.
Probably because of the increase inner-city violence is when challenges to gun ownership started. With the NRA in place, a new political platform was born.
Guns don’t kill people. Gun nuts kill people. The bigger the cache, the more go down with him when he snaps.
I imagine that cheaper guns in general and cheaper, more effective/convenient handguns (i.e., revolvers) contributed to the problems (namely, more gun owners and guns that could be 1. carried easily or concealed 2. fired quickly, esp. in the heat of the moment). All that occurred in the mid-1800s, right?
Just speculatin’.
What baffles the hell out of me is how many people are harmed with guns in accidents, murders, etc compared to the number of times guns are successfully used in self-defense, and that the NRA is claiming it wants to protect the right of the people to protect themselves. Well, it’s not working. Give it up, Chuck, before I take you up on that offer to remove that gun from your cold, dead hands.
If our founding fathers had known what an epidemic gun violence would be, would they have kept the vague terminology of the 2nd Amendment? IMHO, I don’t think so.
What are the numbers, Crown? I think just the knowledge that someone you plan to commit a crime against might have a gun is a detterant. After they passed the concealed weapon law back in Texas, the crime rate did go down.
But, to address the original question, I believe that the big debate over the right to bear arms began when the Confederate Army was being disbanded and disarmed. I’ve heard that when it was demanded they hand over their guns (many of which were personally owned firearms), they refused and cited the 2nd Amendment.
That’s one thing. But there’s a big difference between being forced to give up your only huntin’ rifle, and being forced to give up buying 20 semi-automatic assault rifles a year. The NRA does not have my sympathy.
Oh, come on folks. Surely we can find an answer to a simple factual question about a controversial issue without turning it into yet another Great Debate. There’s like 50 threads over there for Chrissakes.
Don’t know about the political debate, but it’s my understanding that there was very little academic debate on the Second Amendment until about 12 years ago, when Sanford Levinson, a law prof, published an article in the Yale Law Review: The Embarrassing Second Amendment. I believe that triggered a lot of academic debate about the exact meaning of the Amendment.
jti may be about right.
If I read this site correctly, and I did it rather quickly, even the First Amendment saw little debate until the late 1920’s. Link
So it would be surprising that the debate on the Second didn’t start until the last 20 or so years.
The Civil war was the last one fought with “real” militias. There were a lot of State, City, and fraternal militias. Altho some fought bravely, in a modern war, they were found to be a hinderance, as standardization had begun to set in. The Union regularized all the Militias it could. After that, there were few “well regulated militias” a man could join. Before, you could always get together with your buddies, say in your club*, and form a “milita” with uniforms & everyting. The State would often provide older guns for free or very cheap.
After the Civil war, there were no more “private” militias, and even state militia began to be downplayed. So, the arguement was sorta moot, prior, as you could likely say “Militia?, sure, me & my fellow Elks, Lodge 153, are a Militia”. Now if you do that, the FBI investigates you. There are no more “militas”, per se.
*fraternal clubs were VERY important, pre WWI.