One of the most bizarre talking points among anti-gun zealots is that the Second Amendment preserves a collective right, that “the right of the people” really meant the states, even though the Constitution specifies states and numerous points. For these folks, the idea that the Second Amendment is an individual right was something that sprang up in the 20th Century, fully formed as if from the head of Zeus.
Kostas Moros has a really good thread debunking that claim with 19th-century sources on X.
However, Catherine Salgado, writing at our sister site, PJ Media, has a fantastic bit from the 18th century that is relevant.
America’s Founders firmly believed that the right to keep and bear arms was the right that safeguarded all others, and this belief is one we must recall in this 250th year of our nation’s existence.
On this date, July 23, 1793, Roger Sherman died. While many Americans have forgotten his name, he was the only one of the Founding Fathers to sign all four of the documents considered most key to the birth of the United States: the Continental Association from the First Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, Sherman was on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Having been present at so many of the most important moments of the Revolution and the establishment of our republic, Sherman understood how vital it was for ordinary citizens to be able to defend themselves.
Like many of his fellow leaders of the Revolutionary generation, Sherman expressed his strong conviction about the importance of what we now call the Second Amendment. In 1790, only a few years before his death, he made the following comment:
[I] conceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular States, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
Notice that while he is discussing the topic of militias, he makes it very clear that every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms separate from the right to serve in a militia. Democrats sometimes try to claim that the Founders meant gun rights to operate only in the context of militias, which is false.
Exactly. While Sherman was talking about militias, he specifies private citizens. He also notes that the states should be defended “by force of arms” when invaded, and I think that’s vitally important, too.
After all, if the right of the people to keep and bear arms means the militia, then why did Sherman—a man who was on the committee that wrote the Second Amendment, mind you—name both states and private citizens? The answer is because the right of the people is the right of private citizens to keep and bear arms, which he should then use to “resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made.”
In other words, he should defend himself from all threats, foreign and domestic, with his own arms, even if the domestic threat comes from his own government.
This is a man who, at the very least, was in the room when the Second Amendment was written. He was intimately involved in the discussions about which rights should be preserved and why. He knew what the thinking went behind the Second Amendment, and he knew damn good and well that it was always intended as an individual right, though one the state could draw from in time of war.
Understand that this concept that it was never an individual right until the 20th century is nothing but revisionist history. It’s an attempt to try and trick originalists into supporting gun control or a tool used to attack originalists for not supporting it. It has little to no basis in history. Sherman’s own words make that ridiculously clear.
In fact, it was the anti-gun “militia only” interpretation that was an artifact of the 20th century, and one that should be relegated to the dustbin of history immediately.
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Read the full article here
