A right to bear arms? : the contested role of history in contemporary debates on the Second Amendment / edited by Jennifer Tucker, Barton C. Hacker, and Margaret Vining.

Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2019.

ix, 345 pages ; 27 cm.

Smithsonian contribution to knowledge.

"The history of firearm use and possession is a topic of considerable contemporary debate. Yet, what do we actually know about firearms in the Anglo-American tradition? How is the history of firearms taught and remembered? In recent years historians and legal scholars have examined different threads of the densely interwoven relationships between firearms and American culture and society. This history stretches back to 14th-century England and includes locations as diverse as Puritan Massachusetts and 19th-century Dodge City. Rather than assume a static, unchanging relationship to firearms, historians and legal scholars have shown that this history has been closely related to the broader processes of social change that transformed American society from an early modern pre-industrial culture governed by a powerful monarch to a multi-cultural industrial democracy. The book addresses aspects of the current state of historical scholarship on firearms; offers a rare, bipartisan view of the significant breadth of the current state of historical scholarship on firearms history; and includes views of legal practitioners with divergent interpretations of the current meaning of the Second Amendment."--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-333) and index.

Online version: Right to bear arms? Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2019

KF3941 .R543 2019

English

Smithsonian Institution compilation copyright 2019

9781944466251 (hardcover)
1944466258 (hardcover)
9781944466268 (ebook)