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TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS: THE ORIGINS
OF AN AMERICAN-ANGLO RIGHT
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.
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