For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

(Hardback)

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Description

[This book] provides the kind of scholarly resource that educated citizens need to think for themselves, a rich digest of primary sources documenting--in their own words--the views, motives, and intentions of the Framers, historic commentators, legislators, and judiciary who have debated the right to keep and bear arms from the origins of our republic. Preston K. Covey, Carnegie Mellon University Beginning with its origins in the English Civil War, Clayton Cramer traces the development in the United States of the right to keep and bear arms--through the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates that followed, its inclusion by Congress in the Bill of Rights, to the present controversy over gun control. This book provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective for the ongoing national debate over arms.

Reviews

The book provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective to this debate, particularly the role it plays in civil disturbances, civil liberties, the right to police protection (or what should take its place when police are unable to offer adquate protection), and a legislative history of the Second Amendment.-Surveillant
"The book provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective to this debate, particularly the role it plays in civil disturbances, civil liberties, the right to police protection (or what should take its place when police are unable to offer adquate protection), and a legislative history of the Second Amendment."-Surveillant

Author Bio

CLAYTON E. CRAMER is author of By the Dim and Flaring Lamps: The Civil War Diary of Samuel McIlvaine, he has had numerous articles published concerning constitutional history, gun control, civil defense, and problems of media ethics.