To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right

I lack the background to critique Malcolm's English history, but there are a few areas where I think Malcolm runs into problems. One is interpretation. Malcolm stresses the change in the 1689 right from a right to bear arms "for their common defence" to "their defence," arguing that this shows a determined choice to abandon a collectivist right in favor of an individual right. I personally think this was more about simplifing language than a fundamental change in the right's conception. But, more importantly, I think this underscores the limitation of speaking about a right in individual versus collective terms. Here, Malcolm concludes that the English right was "individual" and then goes on to lay out all of the collective defence reasons that the right was necessary, i.e. a fear of Catholic plots and of standing armies.

2nd Amendment absolutists shouldn't see this book as their savior because, even if we accept Malcolm's conclusion that the 2nd Amendment was based upon the English conception, it still would not stop gun limitations, or bans, in the U.S. While Malcolm supplies a quote from William Rawle claiming that the 2nd Amendment limits the power of the states, constitutional practice holds otherwise. The 2nd Amendment only limits the federal government because the Supreme Court has not yet, and probably won't in the near future, incorporated it into the 14th Amendment. Moreover, Malcolm's final chapter underscores this fact because she lays out the reasons the 2nd Amendment was felt to be necessary, a fear of federal military dominance. The entire chapter is replet with references to the fear of a federal standing army and the need for states to maintain an armed citizenry. Therefore, the 2nd Amendment was necessary to remove the possibility that the Federal government would disarm the people.

My only other criticism is minor. Malcolm cites the position of the 2nd Amendment as 2nd as evidence of its importance. This a shockingly amateur mistake for a historian to make. The fact is that the 2nd amendment was originally the 4th one proposed on a list of 12, the first two failed to be ratified (though one was ratified 2 centuries later). Both of these where only technical changes rather than "rights" and the fact that the right to keep and bear arms is 2nd is more accidential than by design.

For the most part I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would strongly recomend it, though the limitations on Malcolm's dealing with American constitutionalism should not be forgotten. Readers will gain a much needed lesson in the the English tradition from which the American union developed.

Few topics of contemporary social, moral, and political debate can provoke as much raw emotion and open hostility as the Second Amendment, particularly in relation to the topic of gun prohibition. This subject routinely causes many well-intentioned people of whatever view to give up all pretense of courtesy and reason in favor of ad hominem attacks on those with whom they disagree. Readers of history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm's To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right will find these ugly by-products of the contemporary conflict refreshingly absent. Malcolm clearly keeps her distance from any broad normative judgments about the social utilities or costs of civilian firearms possession, offering instead a sober, scholarly, historical discussion of the Amendment's origins. Meticulously tracing the British history of regulations on firearms ownership from the Middle Ages on, she provides a detailed and illuminating history that includes the English Bill of Rights and, a century later, the American one. Because it is only in this historical context that the Second Amendment's meaning can be fully understood and appreciated, Malcolm's book is essential reading for anyone interested in this complex and controversial subject.

When the book turns to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, however, its energy seems to flag. I am sympathetic to the argument that the Second Amendment confers a right on "the people" respectively, i.e. as individuals, "to keep and bear Arms." But Malcolm's argument is undermined, however slightly, when she urges that "[s]ome" i.e., more than one, nascent American state constitutions "included a specific right for an individual to have firearms for his own defence" (p. 150), but quotes and cites, as best I can discern, only the Pennsylvania bill of rights in support (pp. 148, 149). Is there more than one, or not? Another apparent example of waning energy toward the end is the treatment of an argument that "like the Convention Parliament in 1689, the senators [debating drafts of the Second Amendment] rejected a motion to add 'for the common defense' after 'to keep and bear arms.' " (P. 161.) To me, that point seems crucial, but Malcolm does not explore it further, beyond providing a footnoted reference to another source.

Finally, some minor quibbles. Noting the author's regular use of English spelling, I thought she was English until I realized, on reading the penultimate page, that she is an American (p. 176). Perhaps Malcolm was reared and educated in England, but nevertheless her anglicizations are distracting and seem affected. It also seems affected to spell "dissension" archaically as "dissention" (p. 153), and to print "u" as "v" in quoted material, as in "Vs" (Us) (p. 41) or "vpon" (upon) (p. 59). If one is going to do that, why not also ask the typesetter to print quotations with the long "s" that looks similar to the lower-case "f"? (Actually, I wouldn't so much object to that, though it would also come across as affected: at least the long "s" is still an "s," though of archaic form, whereas a "v" is not a "u" at all.) These are, of course, trivial items, but when I encounter them, I think, "Come on, Harvard University Press copy-editors, get with it!"

After all the foregoing griping, it may appear that (1) I am a detail-obsessed curmudgeon of uncommon degree, and (2) I disliked the book. The first point may be true, but the second is not. I look forward to seeing how others eventually build on Malcolm's scholarship.

The last chapter of the book examines how this right ended up in the U.S. Bill of Rights. While necessarily shorter than my detailed study in _For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms_ (Praeger, 1994), it is still a fine telling of the process by which the Second Amendment was adopted.