For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms [Hardcover]

Clayton E. Cramer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0275949133 | ISBN-13: 978-0275949136 | Publication Date: May 25, 1994 | Edition: 2nd Printing

[This book] provides the kind of scholarly resource that educated citizens need to think for themselves, a rich digest of primary sources documenting--in their own words--the views, motives, and intentions of the Framers, historic commentators, legislators, and judiciary who have debated the right to keep and bear arms from the origins of our republic. Preston K. Covey, Carnegie Mellon University

Beginning with its origins in the English Civil War, Clayton Cramer traces the development in the United States of the right to keep and bear arms--through the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates that followed, its inclusion by Congress in the Bill of Rights, to the present controversy over gun control. This book provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective for the ongoing national debate over arms.

Editorial Reviews

Review

?The book provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective to this debate, particularly the role it plays in civil disturbances, civil liberties, the right to police protection (or what should take its place when police are unable to offer adquate protection), and a legislative history of the Second Amendment.?-Surveillant

Book Description

Provides important background, analysis, documentation, and perspective for the ongoing national debate over arms.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Praeger; 2nd Printing edition (May 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275949133
• ISBN-13: 978-0275949136
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #724,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best legal history of the right to arms in the U.S., October 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Hardcover)

After a short chapter on the European origins of the right to keep and bear arms, Cramer plunges into a detailed analysis of the legal origins of the Second Amendment, and of the treatment of the right to bear arms in state and federal courts over the following 200 years. One of the particularly important contribution made by Cramer is his detailed analysis of gun control cases in the state courts in the 19th century. Judicial hostility to the right to bear arms, Cramer shows us, is nothing new. Intellectual dishonesty, mistrust of ordinary people, and sometimes outright lying have characterized the approach of much of the judiciary to the right to bear arms since 1820s. Not all state courts have been willing to use illogical legal "reasoning" to undermine the right to arms, but many have. As Cramer explicates, judicial contortions have been especially noticeable in slave-holding states. When legislatures have attempted to degrade (or even destroy entirely) the right to bear arms, too many courts have refused to intervene. Of course Cramer also discusses the many state court decisions from Georgia, Washington, and elsewhere in which courts have struck down laws aimed at gun-owners. Too often, scholars who write about legal topics get trapped in legal arcana, and end up producing a book that can be read only by legal specialists. Cramer, to his great credit, succeeds in making legal cases comprehensible to an ordinary reader, and at the same time treating the legal cases which the subtlety and sophistication that good legal analysis demands. For the Defense of the Themselves and the State is not a breezy read. It is 274 pages of single-spaced, small (but readable) text. This is a serious book. Any lawyer or historian with an interest in the right to arms will find the book fascinating. The book would be an excellent donation to a college library or a law school library. It would also do fine at a public library or a high school library. Review by Dave Kopel, Independence Institute, http://i2i.org

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for our liberal college educators, November 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Hardcover)

The first review said it all, but wanted to second that one. This book is full of information on gun ownership and the many infrigements that have occured and been ignored.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-Read for historians, legislators, lawyers, & judges, May 5, 2001

By 

Brian Brunner "WebWalker" (Reading, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Hardcover)

I found Mr. Cramer's book while preparing a Motion to annul New York's anti-pistol law. It is very valuable both as a catalog of applicable cases, and concise analysis thereof. This book should be on every lawyers' bookshelf, on every Court bench. It is also of great value to the civil rights activist seeking to restore the Right to Arms to its proper position alongside the Freedoms of Speech, Press, and Association.