The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms. By Stephen P. Halbrook. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008. xii, 425 pp. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-56663-792-3.)

Abstract

The Founders' Second Amendment is not, strictly speaking, a work of scholarly history; rather, it is an exercise in constitutional advocacy—a work of law office history on steroids. Stephen P. Halbrook, a longtime gun rights advocate and lawyer, has been a tireless champion of the gun rights cause for more than two decades. Much of the material in this book has appeared in earlier law review articles by Halbrook, who has published in such venerable journals as Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy and the Texas Review of Law and Politics. Rather than seek to understand how the Second Amendment emerged out of the complex cultural, social, and political landscape of revolutionary America, Halbrook seeks to find a useable past for modern gun rights advocates and litigators. Although Halbrook moves beyond the cliché list of sources often invoked by participants in this acrimonious debate, his argument rests on a highly questionable reading Pennsylvania Constitution and the letters of Thomas Jefferson.