Source: http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.state2nd.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 14:15:20+00:00

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Considerable attention has been given in the last several years to the original meaning of the Second Amendment; the assumption once commonly made in the academic community -- that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right -- seems to be on the decline. Much of the recent scholarship recognizes the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment, but it seems that the state constitutions adopted during the early years of the Republic have been given insufficient attention in relation to this interpretation.
Not surprisingly, many of the provisions contained in the Bill of Rights were present, in one form or another, in the state constitutions in effect at the time the Constitution was ratified; various ancestors of the Second Amendment can be readily discerned in these documents. The state constitutions adopted before the Constitution and Bill of Rights can help tell us what meaning "the right to keep and bear arms" had in the political vocabulary of the men who wrote, debated, and ratified these documents.
This isn't a statement of a right to keep and bear arms, but it certainly suggests that an individual being "unarmed" was undesirable, and "taking up arms, to repel force by force" was considered an appropriate response.
If, as some people claim, the Second Amendment reflected concerns about the enlarged powers of the central government, and was intended to protect the "right"  of state governments to maintain military forces independent of the national government  , why do Pennsylvania's and Vermont's state constitutions contain broad, explicitly individual guarantees of the right to keep and bear arms? The evidence is clear that at least some of the newly independent states sought to protect the right of their citizens to individual self-defense.
This may be an indication that a broad right to keep and bear arms was not intended, since it is hard to imagine why "for the common defence" would be added to such an assertion, unless it was intended to limit the breadth of that right. But before we too quickly assume that "for the common defence" was intended to restrict or eliminate an individual right, it is important to remember that standing armies had been used by Cromwell as an excuse to disarm the English population, on the grounds that the militia was no longer needed, once a standing army was provided "for the common defence". By articulating "for the common defence" as a reason for individual citizens to possess arms, the Massachusetts and North Carolina constitutions may have intended to exclude this excuse for disarming the people.
Less than forty years later, Justices Nelson & Tunney of the Tennessee Supreme Court used a similar argument in their dissenting opinion, in Andrews v. State (1871)  ; thus, this understanding of "common defense" was not unique.
Is this a right, or an obligation, to keep and bear arms? If the Second Amendment derives from such an obligation, the "collectivist" claim that no individual right was intended, has some superficial appeal. While every man would be armed under such a system, except for the "religiously scrupulous", the arms would be for the purpose of collective defense. A broad individual right might exist independent of this clause -- but some evidence would be required to prove it.
The state constitutions from this period are divided: those of Pennsylvania, Vermont, and North Carolina are clearly protective of an individual right; Massachusetts' constitutional protection, based on the Tennessee and North Carolina Supreme Court decisions discussed above, appears to be an individual right, as well as a protection against standing armies; only New York's constitutional provision might be considered support for the "collectivist" interpretation -- and its language is not even somewhat similar to the Second Amendment.
In the same way that state constitutions adopted before the Bill of Rights can tell us something about the ancestry of the Second Amendment, the state constitutions containing a "right to keep and bear arms" clause adopted after the Bill of Rights can tell us something about the meaning commonly ascribed to the Second Amendment after its passage.
There is no shortage of such clauses to consider; the question is how long the adoption of constitutions with "right to keep and bear arms" clauses remains relevant to the issue of original intent. I have chosen, rather arbitrarily, to examine those constitutions adopted before 1845. Only a few adults alive at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified would have lived past this date.
In this formative period of American history (1789-1845), there are a total of fifteen constitutions, adopted by nine states, one territory, and one independent nation (the Republic of Texas)  that contain a "right to bear arms in defense of himself and the State"  , or some slight variant. Because these provisions specify "in defense of himself", it is unambiguous that the right protected in each case is individual. These must be considered as evidence for the individualist school, since the language used is similar to, and doubtless borrowed from, the Second Amendment.
By comparison, there are only three constitutions in this period that specify "for the common defence" or "for their common defence": the Maine State Constitution of 1819, and the Tennessee State Constitutions of 1796 and 1834. But as we have already seen in Simpson v. State (1833), and Andrews v. State (1871), the Tennessee Supreme Court unambiguously recognized that an individual right to bear arms for self-defense was protected, even in the presence of the qualifier, "for their common defense".
While not surprising -- racism has frequently been at the root of "gun control" laws -- it does suggest that the right protected was individual. If this clause had only protected a "collective right" of the state militia, the same result (disarming free blacks), could have achieved by simply refusing to allow free blacks into the state militia. Indeed, in the period before the Civil War: "Only North Carolina permitted free blacks to bear arms in the ranks of its militia..."  If "for their common defence" did not provide a sufficient basis for disarming individual free blacks, it suggests that individual ownership and carriage of arms was not dependent on being in militia service.
There are some exceptional state constitutions that are not clearly in either camp. The Rhode Island State Constitution of 1842 uses the second clause of the Second Amendment by itself: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  Since Rhode Island's constitution also guarantees "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, papers and possessions against unreasonable searches and seizures" and "The people shall continue to enjoy and freely exercise all the rights of fishery, and the privileges of the shore", it is difficult to imagine "the people" referring only to a "collective right." Does the use of "the people" indicate that such rights applied only to such collective entities as a militia, or does it indicate the plural of "persons"? Almost certainly, it meant "all individuals", since section 21 restricts the "right in a peaceable manner to assemble for their common good, and to apply to those invested with the powers of government, for redress of grievances" to "citizens".  The framers of the Rhode Island constitution clearly made a distinction between "people" and "citizens", with "people" referring to individual rights shared by all; to assert that "the people" refers only to a collective right stretches one's credulity.
The New York State Constitution of 1821 carries over the language of the 1777 constitution, which provides some evidence to justify the argument that the purpose of the "well regulated militia" clause was for a collective defense.
In comparison with the state constitutions adopted before the Second Amendment, the constitutions adopted after it heavily support the individual rights position. Fifteen of the twenty constitutions adopted after the Constitution unambiguously protect an individual right; Rhode Island's constitution appears to protect an individual right; and of the remaining four, two are Tennessee's state constitutions, which Tennessee Supreme Court decisions and historical evidence clearly show were recognized as protecting an individual right.
Determining what is truth in history consists of marshalling evidence, both for and against a proposition. Like many questions in history, there is evidence with respect to the Second Amendment that could be misinterpreted as evidence against the individual rights position; but the evidence on our side is overwhelming. The state constitutions are, of course, not the only evidence for the meaning of the Second Amendment, or the strongest evidence -- but they are one more confirmation that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" was intended to protect an individual right.
Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a telecommunications manufacturer in Northern California. His first book, By The Dim And Flaring Lamps: The Civil War Diary of Samuel McIlvaine, was published by Library Research Associates in 1990. Mr. Cramer is currently writing a book on the original intent and judicial history of Second Amendment.
1. Francis Newton Thorpe, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies, (Washington, Government Printing Office: 1909), 5:3083.
4. Some would argue that a government having "rights" is a notion that the Framers would find peculiar, since governments are mere creations of individuals, who alone have rights. See Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum, (Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas: 1985), 60-66, for a survey of the ideas of John Locke, and their influence on the formation of the American government.
5. David J. Steinberg, "Other Views of the Second Amendment", in The Right To Keep And Bear Arms, 97th Congress, 2d session (1982); (Washington, Government Printing Office: 1982), 25.
8. Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed, (Oakland, CA, The Independent Institute: 1984), 64-65.
9. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, ed., Legal Papers of John Adams, (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press: 1965), 3:248.
11. Don B. Kates, Jr., "The Second Amendment: A Dialogue", in Law and Contemporary Problems, 49:1 [Winter 1986], 147, note 24.
12. Simpson v. State, 5 Yerg. (Tenn.) 356 (1833), 356, 357 (1833).
13. Simpson v. State, 5 Yerg. (Tenn.) 356, 359, 360 (1833).
14. Andrews v. State, 3 Heiskell 165, 193, 194 (1871).
15. State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418 (1843). This case has been frequently miscited as State v. Huntley -- though perhaps because the name is spelled both ways in the decision.
16. State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418, 422 (1843).
17. State v. Huntly, 3 Iredell 418, 422, 423 (1843).
19. Jonathan Elliot, The Debates of the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, (New York, Burt Franklin: 1888), 3:425-426.
20. Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 42-43, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets On The Constitution of the United States, (Brooklyn, NY: 1888), 55- 56.
21. Jacob E. Cooke, ed., The Federalist, (Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press: 1961), 320-321.
22. Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 42-43, in Ford, 55-56.
23. Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 Feb. 1788, in 2 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (Mfm. Supp.) at 1778-1780, quoted in Halbrook, 68.
25. State Constitutions: Connecticut (1818), Indiana (1816), Kentucky (1792 & 1799), Michigan (1835), Missouri (1820), Mississippi (1817), Ohio (1802), Pennsylvania (1790), Texas (1845), Vermont (1793). Also, see the Republic of Texas (1838). Although a foreign country, the Republic of Texas was settled and controlled by Americans, who wrote a constitution expressing sentiments similar to the U.S. Constitution.
29. Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1968), 209.
31. Joseph H. Cartwright, The Triumph of Jim Crow, (Knoxville, TN, University of Tennessee Press: 1976), 4.
32. Bernard C. Nalty, Strength For The Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military, (New York, Macmillian: 1989), 20.

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