Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T08:39:45.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gun Laws in Early America: The Regulation of Firearms Ownership, 1607–1794

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

Michael A. Bellesiles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

King James I stated the official position of the English governing elite on gun ownership succinctly. When it was suggested that more of England's subjects should enjoy the right to hunt and own firearms, James responded that “it is not fit that clowns should have these sports.”

Discussion of early American gun laws begins with consideration of the English legal heritage. In the last few years, adherents of the self-described “standard model” of the meaning of the Second Amendment have constructed a paradigm of an uninterrupted tradition of legally sanctioned individual gun ownership in America. Such a construction starts with the idea that the British brought an acceptance of the universal ownership of firearms with them to the Americas. That cultural norm gave form to the meaning of the Second Amendment, which institutionalized an individual right to bear arms for purposes of personal and communal defense and as a security against a tyrannical government. This history matters greatly to these scholars in establishing an original intent in the Second Amendment to protect an individual's right to own guns.

Type
Notes and Commentary
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Fall 1998 , pp. 567 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Quoted in Manning, Roger B., Hunters and Poachers: A Cultural and Social History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Some scholars see “universal gun ownership,” others “near universal” levels of gun ownership. On the first, see, for instance, Hardy, David T., Origins and Development of the Second Amendment (Southport, Conn.: Blacksmith Corp., 1986), 42–45Google Scholar; Halbrook, Stephen P., That Every Man be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Albuquerque: New Mexico University Press, 1984), 55–65Google Scholar; Williams, David G., “Civic Republicanism and the Citizen Militia: The Terrifying Second Amendment,” Yale Law Journal 101 (1991): 553, 577-79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the latter formulation, see, for example, Malcolm, Joyce Lee, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 20–25, 138-40Google Scholar; Shalhope, Robert E., “The Armed Citizen in the Early Republic,” Law and Contemporary Problems 49 (1986): 125–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms; Cottrol, Robert J., Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994)Google Scholar; Cramer, Clayton E., For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original In-tent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994)Google Scholar; Reynolds, Glenn Harlan, “A Critical Guide to the Second Amendment,” Tennessee Law Review 62 (1995): 461–512Google Scholar. This issue of the Tennessee Law Review offers a complete and uncritical overview of the “standard model,” or “individualist,” reading of the Second Amendment.

4. Randy E. Barnett, “The New Consensus on the Second Amendment,” talk at Emory Law School, 16 October 1997.

5. Barnett, Randy E. and Kates, Don B., “Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment,” Emory Law Journal 45 (1996): 1139–1259Google Scholar; quotations at 1141-42. This is an extended demolition job on a single article, the equally intemperate “Gun Crazy” (see below, note 7).

6. Barnett and Kates, “Under Fire,” 1254-59. The list of those scholars who fall outside Barnett and Kates's “virtual unanimity” (a new form of virtual reality) is too long for complete citation here but includes Williams, “Civic Republicanism and the Citizen Militia”; Cress, Lawrence D., “An Armed Community: The Origin and Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms,” Journal of American History 71 (1984): 22–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Henigan, Denis A., “Arms, Anarchy and the Second Amendment,” Valparaiso University Law Review 26 (1991): 107–29Google Scholar; Weatherup, Roy G., “Standing Armies and Armed Citizens: An Historical Analysis of the Second Amendment,” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 10 (1983): 285–314Google Scholar; Ehrman, Keith A. and Henigan, Dennis A., “The Second Amendment in the Twentieth Century: Have You Seen Your Militia Lately?” University of Dayton Law Review 15 (1989): 5–58Google Scholar; Bogus, Carl T., “Race, Riots, and Guns,” Southern California Law Review 66 (1993): 1365–88Google Scholar; Rakove, Jack N., Declaring Rights: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 192–93Google Scholar; Douglas, William O., Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143 (1972)Google Scholar; Warren Burger, “The Right to Bear Arms,” Parade, 14 January 1990; Garry Wills, “To Keep and Bear Arms,” New York Review of Books, 21 September 1995, 62-72; as well as the twenty-six law professors who signed an advertisement in American Law, June 1994, p. 96.

Two additional articles of value have appeared since this article was written: Bogus, Carl T., “The Hidden History of the Second Amendment,” U.C. Davis Law Review 31 (1997): 311–408Google Scholar; Higginbotham, Don, “The Federalized Militia Debate: A Neglected Aspect of Second Amendment Scholarship,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 55 (1998): 39–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Herz, Andrew D., “Gun Crazy: Constitutional False Consciousness and Dereliction of Dialogic Responsibility,” Boston University Law Review 75 (1995): 57–153Google Scholar.

8. On this fundamental issue of eighteenth-century struggles for the definition of rights, see Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., ed., Three British Revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1973)Google Scholar; Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar; Rakove, Jack N., Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Knopf, 1997)Google Scholar.

9. Barnett, “The New Consensus on the Second Amendment.”

10. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 3d ed. (London: Phaidon, 1995), 1Google Scholar.

11. See Malcolm, Joyce Lee and Bellesiles, Michael, “Exchange: On the History of the Right to Bear Arms,” Law and History Review 15 (1997): 339–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article grows directly out of a desire to explore the opinions expressed in that exchange in greater detail.

12. Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms, 115, 130, 134. See also Cottrol, Gun Control and the Constitution, xi-xvii; Halbrook, That Every Man be Armed, 44-48, and A Right to Bear Arms (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), 1–17Google Scholar; Hardy, Origins and Development, 35-38; Weatherup, Roy G., “Standing Armies and Armed Citizens: An Historical Analysis of the Second Amendment,” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 2 (1975): 973–78Google Scholar; Cramer, For the Defense of Themselves, 26-29.

13. Pickering, Danby, ed., Statutes at Large (London, 1764), 9:67–69Google Scholar. All British rights were similarly restricted. See, for instance, Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Mayton, William T., “Seditious Libel and the Lost Guarantee of a Freedom of Expression,” Columbia Law Review 84 (1984): 91–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reid, John Phillip, The Authority of Rights (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), vol. 1Google Scholar of Constitutional History of the American Revolution; Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 10-28.

14. Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 4:175Google Scholar; Burn, Richard, The Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer, revised by Williams, Edward Vaughan and D'Oyly, Thomas (5 vols.; London, 1836), 2:596, 615Google Scholar; Munsche, P. B., Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws, 1671-1831 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981), 8–32Google Scholar.

15. Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:139. Blackstone, defined the “auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject” as those “which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great primary rights, or personal security, personal liberty, and private property.” In order, these five rights are Parliamentary power, the limitations of the king's prerogative, legal redress, petition, and “having arms for their defence.” Ibid., 1:136-40.

16. Blackstone, Commentaries, 4:116; Pickering, Statutes at Large, passim; Greener, W. W., The Gun and its Development (New York, 1967), 212Google Scholar; Gregory, G., A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Including the Latest Improvement and Discovery (3 vols.; New York, 1819)Google Scholar, n.p. (“gun” entry); Burn, , Justice of the Peace, 2:290–91Google Scholar, 487, 596-97, 615, 730-35, 3:762-63; Gilmour, Ian, Riot, Risings and Revolution: Governance and Violence in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Pimlico, 1992), 135–206Google Scholar; Munsche, Gentlemen and Poachers, 144; Macfarlane, Alan, The Justice and the Mare's Ale: Law and Disorder in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 189–96Google Scholar.

17. Schwoerer, Lois G., ‘No Standing Armies!”: The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; White, John T., “Standing Armies in Time of War: Republican Theory and Military Practice During the American Revolution” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1978), 1–40Google Scholar; Weatherup, “Standing Armies,” 961-1001.

18. Trenchard quoted in Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 62. See in general, Ibid., 61-65, 112-19; Shalhope, Robert E., “The Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment,” Journal of American History 69 (1982): 599–614CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, E. P., Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon, 1976)Google Scholar; Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution; Munsche, Gentlemen and Poachers; Robertson, John, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Movement (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1985).Google Scholar

19. Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston: W. White, 1853-1854), 1:211–12Google Scholar; Browne, William H. et al., eds., Archives of Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1883-1972), 52: 448–74Google Scholar.

20. Mcllwaine, H. R., ed., Journal of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1619-1658/59 (Richmond, Va.: E. Waddey Co., 1915), 5:13, 91Google Scholar; Fleet, Beverly, ed., Virginia Colonial Abstracts (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1961), 2:15Google Scholar; Salley, A. S., ed., Journal of the Commons House of the Assembly of South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: State Printing Co., 1925), 24Google Scholar; Russell, Carl P., Guns on the Early Frontiers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 10–13Google Scholar.

21. Crane, Verner S., The Southern Frontier (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), 17–21Google Scholar; Juricek, John T., “The Westo Indians,” Ethnohistory 11 (1964): 134–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDowell, W. L., ed., Journals of the Commissioners of the Indian Trade, Sept. 20, 1710-August 29, 1718 (Columbia: South Carolina Archives, 1955), 5, 70–75, 123, 152-53, 295-96Google Scholar; Saunders, William, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh, N.C.: Hale and Daniels, 1886), 1:811Google Scholar, 893-94; Russell, Guns on the Early Frontiers, 23, 41-50; Hatley, Thomas, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians Through the Era of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 32–41Google Scholar. The Spanish encountered similar difficulties in Florida. See Hann, John, Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1988), 8–11Google Scholar.

22. Peterson, Harold L., Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526-1783 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1956), 321Google Scholar; Novak, William J., “Salus Populi: The Roots of Regulation in America, 1787-1873” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis, 1992), 188–89.Google Scholar

23. Morgan, Edmund S., American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975), 235–70Google Scholar.

24. Wood, Peter H., Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Norton, 1974), 324–25.Google Scholar

25. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 239-40; Anderson, Fred, A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years'War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 75–76Google Scholar; Shammas, Carole, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 206–8Google Scholar; Macfarlane, Justice and the Mare's Ale, 191-92; Bellesiles, Michael, “The Origins of American Gun Culture, 1760-1865,” Journal of American History 83 (1996): 425–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, Kathleen M., Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 177–79Google Scholar; Shea, William L., The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1983), 53–54, 92-94Google Scholar; Titus, James, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 42–44, 66, 106-8Google Scholar; Baird, Bruce C. Jr, “The Social Origins of Dueling in Virginia,” in Bellesiles, Michael, ed., Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, John C., ed., The Writings of George Washington (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), 1:31–32, 128-29, 170, 187-89, 200-204, 391, 405, 494-96, 499-501Google Scholar; Brock, Robert A., ed., The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony ofVirginia, 1751-58 (Richmond, Va.: The Society, 1883), 1:41, 82, 94-95, 121, 125Google Scholar.

26. Hening, William W., ed., The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia (Richmond, Va.: Hening, 1809-1823), 2:304, 405Google Scholar; Peterson, Arms and Armor, 321-22. See also Clark, Walter, ed., The State Records of North Carolina (Goldsboro, N.C.: Nash Brothers, 1886-1909), 22: 311–14Google Scholar; Browne, Archives of Maryland, 58:342; Osgood, Herbert L., ed., Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675-1776 (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1905), 6:54Google Scholar; Turnbull, J. H. et al., eds., The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (Hartford: Brown and Parsons, 1850-1890), 1:134, 6:363, 406, 8:386, 9:473, 580, 14:343, 392Google Scholar; Brigham, William, ed., The Compact with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth (Boston, 1836), 84Google Scholar; Browne, , Archives of Maryland, 46: 398–99Google Scholar, 58:122-24, 340-42, 390, 395, 59:146-47; Novak, “Salus Populi,” 188-89.

27. Hening, The Statutes at Large, 1:127, 173-74, 198, 263; 2:333.

28. Ibid., 1:198, 401-2; 2:335. Massachusetts had a slightly different law, one that outlawed “unprofitable fowlers” who wasted powder and lead by missing birds. Miller, John C., The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America (New York: Dell, 1966), 55Google Scholar.

29. Hening, The Statutes at Large, 1:219, 255-56, 441, 518, 525; 2:215, 336-37, 403; 3:343; Shea, Virginia Militia, 57-58; Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 250-58.

30. Hening, The Statutes at Large, 1:255; 3:335; 4:118; 5:16; 6:93-106.

31. Ibid., 1:226; 2:481; 3:459; 4:119, 131; 5:17; 6:109-10; 9:268; 12:182; Howison, Robert Reid, “Dueling In Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 2d. ser., 4 (1924): 217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breen, T. H. and Innes, Stephen, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York, 1980), 26Google Scholar; Shea, Virginia Militia, 114-17.

32. Hening, The Statutes at Large, 3:13-14, 338-39; 4:200-201; 5:90; 6:116, 533, 537-38.

33. Ibid., 7:26-27, 125-26; 9:292; 10:218; 11:493; 12:12-13,24.

34. Ibid., 9:12-13, 20, 71-73, 87, 269; 11:132, 173-74, 479, 494-95; 12:432. See also Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 22:311-14, 332, 382-83, 895-96, 945. Historians have tended to be very impressed with the usefulness of the militia, a view generally not shared by contemporary military observers. Morgan, Edmund, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York: Norton, 1988), 156–73Google Scholar; Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Methuen & Co., 1920), 186–202Google Scholar; Bellesiles, “Gun Culture,” 428-38.

35. Hening, The Statutes at Large, 4:202-3.

36. Turnbull, Public Records of Connecticut, 1:3, 15, 543.

37. E.g., 1639 and 1643, a twenty-shilling fine per town, Ibid., 1:30, 91; 1741, 8:386.

38. Ibid., 1:74, 134, 542-43; 2:390; 3:430; 8:380; 9:341-14, 473, 580.

39. Ibid., 1:282, 350; 2:19-20, 181, 347.

40. Ibid., 2:217; 3:431; 4:177, 485; 1723, 6:363, 406; 9:111; 1756, 10: 479.

41. Ibid., 6:436; 8:382-83; 10:461, 559, 612.

42. Ibid., 1:239; 2:25, 44-46, 52, 244, 270, 361; 3:63, 432; 4:37, 178, 349, 485; 6:363, 406; 8:386; 10:460; Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, Conn.: The Society, 1860-1967), 1:268–69, 276-77, 291-94Google Scholar.

43. Turnbull, Public Records of Connecticut, 10:460-94; Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society 1:331.

44. Turnbull, Public Records of Connecticut, 1:1, 52,74, 79, 138-39, 145-46, 163, 240, 294, 351; Malone, Patrick M., The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1991)Google Scholar.

45. Turnbull, Public Records of Connecticut, 2:119, 271.

46. Ibid., 4:18; 8:379; 5:86-87; 6:381-82.

47. Ibid., 12:133-34, 248, 256-57; Selesky, Harold E., War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 117–19, 192-94, 210-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. Turnbull, Public Records of Connecticut, 14:343, 386-87, 392, 418-20, 433-34; 15:17-18, 97-98, 126-27, 176, 317-18, 420-21, 518; Force, Peter, ed., American Archives (Washington, D.C.: St. Clair and Force, 1837-1853), 1:881; 3:812Google Scholar; Connecticut Courant, March 1, 1775; Selesky, War and Society, 216-41. See also Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 10:337-996; 11:271-396; 14:582-83; 15:518, 572-73, 588-89, 772-73; 22:517-18, 526, 554, 593, 597-600, 744-48, 751, 783, 920, 927, 1013, 1037; 24:407-8.

49. The precise concept of eminent domain was not known under English common law; until the 1770s the taking of property by the sovereign required a special act of Parliament. Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:138-39, 222, 290-96, 4:154-59; McDonald, Forrest, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), 9–24Google Scholar.

50. McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum, 22.

51. See footnote 38 above and Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 10:158; Calhoon, Robert M., The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1965), 281–311, 397-414, 439-78Google Scholar; Flick, Alexander C., Loyalism in New York During the American Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1901), 58–94Google Scholar; Lambert, Robert S., South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 33–58Google Scholar.

52. See, for instance, Turnbull, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1:351, 2:217; Browne, Archives of Maryland, 29:10-11, 47, 98, 153-55, 237-39, 376-78; 30:20-21, 38-39, 461-63; 42:87-90; Cooper, Thomas and McCord, David J., eds., The Statutes at Large of South Carolina (Columbia: A. S. Johnston, 1836-1841), 2:15Google Scholar

53. Scalia, Antonin, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Rakove, Original Meanings; Rakove, , ed., Interpreting the Constitution: The Debate Over Original Intent (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Berger, Raoul, Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Levy, Leonard, Original Intent and the Framers’ Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1988)Google Scholar.

54. For different versions of strict constructions of the Second Amendment, see Halbrook, Stephen P., “What the Framers Intended: A Linguistic Analysis of the Right to ‘Bear Arms,’” Law and Contemporary Problems 49 (1986): 151–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Batey, “Strict Construction of Firearms Offenses: The Supreme Court and the Gun Control Act of 1968,” Ibid., 163-98.

55. 1 Stat. 264 (2 May 1792); 1 Stat. 381 (5 June 1794); Bliss v. Commonwealth, 2 Litt. (Ky) 90, 13 Am. Dec. 251 (1822); Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn. 154, 158 (1840). See also The State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612 (1840).

56. Patterson, Stephen E., “The Federalist Reaction to Shays's Rebellion,” in Gross, Robert A., ed., In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 101–18Google Scholar; Paul Finkleman, “Slavery and the Constitutional Convention: Making a Covenant with Death,” and Ellis, Richard E., “The Persistence of Antifederalism after 1789,” in Beeman, Richard et al., eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 188–225, 295-314Google Scholar; Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric, The Age of Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 58–62Google Scholar.

57. Rakove, Declaring Rights, 176-77. On Madison, see Rakove, Original Meanings, 29-30, 99-100, 139-42, 281-82, 331-65; Matthews, Richard K., If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 48–82, 173-233Google Scholar; Banning, Lance, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

58. Roger Sherman's version of the Bill of Rights, which played a key role in the Congressional debates, addresses only the militia, with no reference to a right to bear arms. Veit, Helen E. et al., eds., Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary Record from the First Federal Congress (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 266–68Google Scholar. The brief debate in the House on this amendment focused on two issues: the “use of the militia” in preventing “the establishment of a standing army”; and the wisdom of allowing religious exemptions for service in the militia. Ibid., 182-84, 198-99. See also Ibid., 4, 30, 37-41, 48, 247-48, 293. In addition, see the debate over the first militia bill in DiGiacomantonio, William C. et al., eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, Volume XIV: Debates in the House of Representatives Third Session, December 1790-March 1791 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 48–76, 102-32, 161-67.Google Scholar