Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:44:13
Our Boy Bellesiles
Eugene Volokh has an interesting post about a magazine that at one point had a favorable review of Michael Bellesiles’ “Arming America.” It’s definitely worth a read.
I read the retraction (Volokh has a link) and was struck by this paragraph:
History, like law, is a search for the truth. Evidence must be interpreted
and evaluated. When evidence is found to be faulty, it should be discarded. Here the evidence shows that everyone did not own a gun (thus disproving the NRA�s position), but it does shows that a significant percentage of the population did own guns, somewhere around two-thirds or three-fourths of the population, varying from colony to colony. |
That’s right, an anti-gunner fessed up and admitted that up to 3/4ths of American Colonists owned guns.
He goes on to say how this is important because it directly impacts our interpretation of the Second Amendment as an individual, versus a state, right. On the one hand, I’m glad there is a direct path to arguing the Second Amendment as an individual right. On the other hand, I think it;s obvious it always was an individual right, since the entire Bill of Rights deals with individual rights, and it’s commonly held in law that when a phrase is defined in a contract or document, it holds that definition unless specifically and explicitly altered. “The people” is always defined in the first ten Amendments as the individuals that make up the citizenry. Given this, the Second Amendment can ONLY apply to Thar rights of an individual.
It seems blatantly obvious to me, and I’m not even a lawyer *or* a Constitutional scholar.
Posted by JimK at 04:44 PM on October 31, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment, Michael_Bellesiles
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