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Article
Scottish Factors and the Origins of the Second Amendment: Some Reflections on David Thomas Konig's Rediscovery of the Caledonian Background to the American Right to Arms
Law and History Review (2004)
  • H. Richard Uviller, Columbia University
  • William G. Merkel, Charleston School of Law
Abstract
David Konig has written an important article that makes a welcome contribution to the rapidly evolving field of Second Amendment scholarship.' In the essay that forms the focal piece of this forum, Konig argues that two rival, hotly contested interpretations of the Second Amendment fail to recapture the original meaning of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. To Konig, neither the individual rights nor the states' rights model of the Second Amendment accurately reflects the conceptual universe shared by the drafters and ratifiers of the Bill of Rights. Neither model (and particularly not the individual rights model), Konig maintains, would have made sense to the persons who left behind a now familiar and much-discussed documentary record related to the call for amendments to the Constitution in 1788, the drafting of the Bill of Rights in 1789, and its ratification in 1791. 
Keywords
  • Second Amendment,
  • Militia
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring January 21, 2004
DOI
10.2307/4141669
Citation Information
H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel. "Scottish Factors and the Origins of the Second Amendment: Some Reflections on David Thomas Konig's Rediscovery of the Caledonian Background to the American Right to Arms" Law and History Review Vol. 22 Iss. 1 (2004) p. 169 - 177
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/william_merkel/19/