The Second Amendment: Preserving the Inalienable Right of Individual Self-Protection |  | Author: David Barton
Publisher: WallBuilder Press
Category: Book
List Price: $5.95
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Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 38904
Media: Paperback
Pages: 96
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.7 x 4.1 x 0.1
ISBN: 0925279773
EAN: 9780925279774
ASIN: 0925279773
Publication Date: June 26, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Second Amendment has today become one of the most controversial parts of the Constitution. Gun opponents claim that "the right to keep and bear arms" is a right that belongs only to the police and military. However, the Founding Fathers who wrote the Second Amendment in 1789 disagreed. Read their words and examine their early laws and State constitutions on this subject. The conclusion is inescapable that the guarantees of the Second Amendment pertain to every citizen individually. Furthermore, learn of the Founders' timeless proposals made two centuries ago on how to deal with the gun violence that today shatters communities and causes the loss of innocent life.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 Great 2nd amendment resource.... November 30, 2008
" Anti Microchip " (Desolation America)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this excellent and very brief pamphlet about 4 months ago. Since that time I have debated just what style I should use for this review.
David Barton has given us a small course on the right to self protection. After all this is what were really talking about. I could go on at length with all the quotes from our founding fathers he uses to make his point, or laws that were on the books in at least one state that required it's citizens to own a gun. After reading this there should be no doubt in the readers mind that the right to self protection is an inalienable right, and that was the intention of our founders. Don't hesitate to purchase this fine fine little book. Seriously, don't walk, RUN to purchase it now....
I would also like to recommend Boston T. Party's Gun Bible. A truly profound look at guns and an amazing resource for experienced and novice gun owners alike. Plus any man who defines federal reserve notes (commonly called the U.S. dollar) as a zero with a slash through it can't be bad.
The Individual Right of Self Protection. July 25, 2008
Scripture Studier (WI,USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
In this small booklet David Barton sets out to prove that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual, not a collective right. He proves this rather effectively by examining four items.
1)America's earliest legal commentaries.
2)Writings of the Founding fathers.
3)Early State laws.
4)State Constitutions.
Mr. Barton provides a large number of quotes like a sampling I'll share:
"The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all [documents] is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and the intention of the parties."- Justice Joseph Story.
"The great object is that every man be armed."- Patrick Henry.
"It is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."- Richard Henry Lee.
And there is this word of caution from Noah Webster- "Before a standing army can rule,the people must be disarmed-as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed."
As the author accurately states in the booklet, the Second Amendment serves to protect what was frequently termed "the first law of nature", the right of self protection.
The only means to "modernize" the Constitution is through the amendment process. Another words, by the people, not by interpretation of the courts.
The Second Amendment basically offers a means of protection from a hostile government or home invader.
This booklet is thoughtfully written and well documented with large Endnotes and Bibliography sections at the back of the booklet.
I highly recommend it.
 One-sided, ahistorical, and law-illiterate May 24, 2008
JNagarya (Boston, MA)
2 out of 26 found this review helpful
1. The Second Amendment has nothing whatever to do with "individual" anything, and never has. When one doesn't avoid the Constitution itself, and the legal authority concerning same -- the legislative history, the debates of that which became, as example, the Second Amendment -- one cannot but recognize that the NRA's Second Amendment lie does not withstand informed scrutiny. The Bill of Rights was debated in the first Congress, populated by Founders and Framers; and this is the first draft of that which became the Second Amendment, as codified by James Madison; note especially the last clause:
"The right of the people [PLURAL, as in "We the people"; it is not, "We the individual," or, "I the people"] to keep and bear arms* shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated [UNDER LAW, as the Constitution expressly stipulates at Art. I., s. 8, c. 16] militia [NOT "individual"] being the best security of a free country [NOT "individual"]: but no person [INDIVIDUAL] religiously scrupulous of [AGAINST] bearing arms, shall be compelled [INVOLUNTARY -- drafting persons into the militia was not unknown] to render military service [IN THE MILITIA/NOT "self-defense"] in person." _Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary Record from the First Federal Congress_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, paper, 1991), Ed. by Veit, et al., at 12.
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*The Bill of Rights was drawn from state constitutions/bills of rights adopted during 1776-77, and 1780. The Second Amendment was drawn from the MILITIA clauses of FOUR of those constitutions/bills of rights. The phrase, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" was drawn from those MILITIA clauses, and is directly associated with the phrase, as in also seen in the debates, "Standing armies being dangerous to liberty,".
_____
OBVIOUSLY, that posited "individual right" is expressly tied to INVOLUNTARY MILITARY SERVICE. As obviously, that is the ONLY posited "individual right" debated as concerned that which would become the Second Amendment. And, as obviously, that posited "individual right" having been VOTED DOWN, the Second has nothing whatever to do with "individual" anything.
2. Even if the Second Amendment "protected" an "individual" right -- which it does not do -- it would not "protect" it FROM regulation by means of law, any more than it "protects" the militia, which is obviously within the scope of the Second Amendment, from the express, Constitutionally-stipulated regulation of it at Art. I., s. 8, c. 16.
A. Completion of ratification of the Bill of Rights, and thus of the Second Amendment, occurred on December 15, 1791.
B. SUBSEQUENTLY, the Congress, populated by Founders and Framers, enacted, on MAY 8, 1792, the "Militia Act," implementing Art. I., s. 8, c. 16, which REGULATES UNDER LAW the militia, regardless the fact that the militia is expressly within the scope of the Second Amendment.
3. The individual "right of self-defense" has ALWAYS been regulated -- limited -- by rule of law, because EVERYONE, not only gun-nuts, has not only that same right, but also the RIGHT NOT to be "defended against" by law-illiterate fools who falsely, even deludedly, assume that the entire Constitution consists of the out-of-context phrase ". . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, . . .".
As a matter of law, pointing even an UNLOADED gun at another is the CRIME of "Assault with a Deadly Weapon".
4. As noted, the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" was drawn from the MILITIA clauses of four state constitutions/bills of rights. The US Constitution also includes MILITIA clauses, the first of which -- Art. I., s. 8, c. 15 -- stipulates the three purposes of militia, one being "suppressing Insurrections".
The Founders/Framers established a gov't with CIVILIAN control of the military; as Samual Adams, and other Founders said: the military power is always in exact subordination to the Civil Power. And always, including under the Founders/Framers, all military organizations were regulated UNDER LAW. There is no "right" to have an armed criminal gang running around shooting AT the gov't/rule of law.
There is, in short, NO "individual" -- or any other -- "right" to "defend against" the gov't/rule of law. That stipulation by itself makes clear that the Founders/Framers were of the view OPPOSITE that of the NRA and the suckers who swallow its anti-Constitutional bilge.
5. Last but not least, to emphasize: it is obvious, except to the profoundly illiterate, and the profoundly dishonest, that the word "people" is PLURAL, exactly as in the first three words of the Constitution: "We the people". It is not "We the individual" or "I the people".
_Creating the Bill of rights, as cited, is in print and available from Amazon. Buy it and READ it, instead of ignoring everything that refutes the NRA falsification of the legal history and law -- which is NOT legitimate "scholarship".
Inalienable or just plain out there? April 9, 2008
Jarrod Heffley (Kentucky, USA)
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Mr. Barton does what he does best by resorting to the founding documents and the founding fathers for his information. Barton shows that the Second Amendment preserves the right to carry weapons by individual citizens, who are "the militia", according to the founding fathers. This is another wonderful work from Wallbuilders and is an vital reference when debating the topic of the second amendment.
SHOOTS HOLES THE SIZE OF TED KENNEDY IN THE HISTORICAL REVISIONIST'S ARGUMENT! March 30, 2007
STEPHEN T. McCARTHY (a Mensa-donkey in Phoenix, Airheadzona.)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
DAVID BARTON begins his informative little booklet, THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Preserving The Inalienable Right Of Individual Self-Protection, by giving the reader a few excerpts from recent articles printed by mainstream American publications and statements made by prominent sources which display the reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment by the anti-firearm crowd. He then, in just 58 pages of text (not including the Endnotes) absolutely blows their position to smithereens! I mean, it's like shooting a sleeping flea on a dead dog with a howitzer. Barton's booklet hits the bull's-eye!
"There is no individual right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights."
~ USA TODAY; December 28, 1994.
"The sale, manufacture, and possession of handguns ought to be banned ... We do not believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep them."
~ The Washington Post; November 5, 1999.
"There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun."
~ Michael Gartner; former president of NBC News, January 16, 1992.
"Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected."
~ The ACLU; policy statement #47, 1996.
The above are just a few samples of the modern misinterpretations and/or outright deceptions that David Barton lays to waste in this compact, but information-loaded and solidly documented booklet. He immediately reminds the reader that "a common error in constitutional interpretation is the failure to examine a document according to its original meaning" and he then gives several quotations from America's Founding Fathers admonishing their contemporaries, and future generations, to do just that when attempting to understand any constitutional passage.
"On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
~ President Thomas Jefferson; June 12, 1823.
Barton, in his customary fashion, proceeds to examine primary source material from our Founding Era with respect to Early Legal Commentaries; Views Of The Founding Fathers; Early Legislative Acts (including the Founders' definition of the "militia"); and State Constitutions.
"Even if it was practicable, would it be wise to disarm the good before the wicked cease from troubling?"
~ John Jay; Original Chief-Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, April 15, 1818.
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
~ Richard Henry Lee; Signer of The Declaration & Framer of the Second Amendment in the First Congress.
"And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
~ Thomas Jefferson; U.S. President & signer of The Declaration, June 1776.
"A free people ought...to be armed."
~ George Washington; some dead guy, January 8, 1790.
I suppose there are bigger books out there that address the Second Amendment debate in greater detail, but if all you're looking for is a quick but effective, battle-tested resource to give you the means and the confidence to annihilate your local Lib in a "Gun Rights" debate, DAVID BARTON's booklet, THE SECOND AMENDMENT, provides all the ammunition you'll need.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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