The 2nd Amendment in Context
“Article the fourth… A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” — As ratified December 15, 1791.
When debating the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee to the right to bear arms, the “founding fathers” are often invoked, but the historical context of the law is far too often overlooked.
James Madison proposed the first draft of what is now known as the 2nd Amendment in the late 1780s. I think it spells out its own purpose a little better than the version that was eventually ratified.
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People, being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
The Articles of Confederation had recently been replaced. The United States had just been reformed, with the new Constitution of the United States having been ratified in 1788. The Continental Army, which had won the American Revolution against the British Empire in 1783, had been disbanded (repeatedly) by Congress. They said that standing armies in a time of peace were dangerous to the liberties of a free people.
However, shortly thereafter, Congress recommissioned two regiments. They were mainly used to secure forts, protect military supplies, fight Native Americans in what is now the Midwest, and keep despots and gangs from taking control of frontier towns. Altogether, they numbered less than one thousand. For comparison, the disbanded Continental Army had reached a peak size of 80,000 during the Revolutionary War, and the British Army had fielded 22,000 soldiers and nearly 30,000 German auxiliaries.
So, in 1790, the security of each newly-formed state was in fact largely left to state militias until the authorizing of the Legion of the United States in late 1791, which became the U.S. Army in 1796. Even then, during the war of 1812, the number of militia members in the conflict dwarfed the regular U.S. Army.
The Bill of Rights was proposed because the Constitution originally favored the “Federalists”, who preferred a strong national government that held power over the states. The Bill of Rights was largely an Anti-Federalist movement to ensure the federal government couldn’t overstep its bounds with the individual states. The Anti-Federalists wanted individual states to hold most of the power, not the federal government.
At that time, much more authority was left to each individual state to govern themselves differently, and Madison wrote the 2nd Amendment to ensure that states would be able to raise a militia to defend their sovereignty in the event of a foreign attack, or federal overreach.
