Product Details

• Producers: David T. Hardy
• Format: Dolby, NTSC
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Studio: Second Amendment Films
• Run Time: 111 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000MCDAJY
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,111 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

In Search of the Second Amendment is the first documentary on the American right to keep and bear arms. It stars twelve professors of constitutional law, and scholars such as Steve Halbrook, Dave Kopel, Clayton Cramer and Don Kates. The story of the American right to arms is told by these experts, and illustrated by re-enactments and original historical documents, many never before filmed. The film also explores the contributions of the African-American experience, including the 14th Amendment (1868). Two civil rights workers discuss the untold story of their movement: how civil rights workers armed themselves and fought off Klan attacks. Produced and directed by David T. Hardy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Documentary on the Second Amendment, January 22, 2007

By 

U.S. Citizen - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Search of the Second Amendment (DVD)

Documentaries like this one are desperately needed. So many of us Americans are ignorant of the Constitution and even of our own rights. But David Hardy has created a wonderful film to teach us about the Second Amendment.

"In Search of the Second Amendment" is based off thirty years of Hardy's research. He has written extensively about the Second Amendment in law review articles and books. And now he has a DVD about it. But what makes this DVD so great is that he's compressed all this research so that in less than two hours, you can learn a great deal about the right to keep and bear arms.

Hardy has interviewed thirteen professors and several other scholars in his documentary. Each professor is an expert in what they're discussing: Malcolm on the right to arms during the 17th century, Denning on the Miller case, Cottrol on the Fourteenth Amendment, etc. The persons appearing the documentary are more than qualified to discuss their respective areas. So when I refer to Hardy in this review, I really mean the person that Hardy interviewed. It's much easier to write the review this way.

Hardy shows the history of the right in England and then in the American colonies. He continues through the American Revolution, and he discusses how the right was protected in different states, and how it ended up in the federal constitution. Throughout the documentary he cites many primary sources, including from the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries.

He demolishes the collective rights argument. It simply amazes me that anti-gunners to this day claim that the right of the people is not actually a right of the people, but of the state. This is nonsense. He explains the famous Miller case and how the ruling recognized an individual right. He also explains what the militia is and that the National Guard is not the militia.

My favorite part of the documentary is the discussion about the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Movement. Not too many people know how intertwined the right to arms and the Fourteenth Amendment are. He shows how this amendment was clearly meant to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. The right to arms was an important issue for Congress, and was even explicitly mentioned in the bills they passed. No other right got such attention. One example shows how a Representative wouldn't even consider Mississippi's claims to representation in Congress until they stop violating the Second Amendment rights of blacks. Hardy shows how blacks could not rely on the police to protect them because the police were aligned with the KKK.

The Civil Rights Movement discussion is great. The idea that civil rights workers practiced only nonviolence is a complete myth. Hardy goes over how workers were armed, and Olson, a professor who appears in the film, gives a detailed account of his experience as a civil rights worker. The Klan was willing to kill, but they weren't willing to be killed. When people put up resistance, the Klan stopped attacking them.

The AEI symposium on the right to arms mentions a very important fact: there doesn't exist a single shred of evidence that the Framers or their contemporaries believed the right to arms wasn't an individual right. Anti-gunners have pored over primary sources trying to find a single example but have come up empty handed. Why? It's not because no examples have survived, but because the Founders and their contemporaries believed the right to arms to be an individual right.

Hardy finishes up the documentary with how the right is relevant today. He talks about genocides, criminals, how the police have no legal duty to protect you, and a few statistics.

Some gripes: the audio is somewhat distorted during a few scenes, but this is because it had to be filtered due to noise nearby. Hardy is not some multimillionaire who can reshoot scenes to his heart's content. The film also doesn't have impressive special effects or amazing reenactments. But despite all this, it doesn't really detract from the film. Content is what's most important, not presentation.

Please watch this documentary. But more importantly, please get your family and friends to watch it. Gun owners, like every other group, are largely apathetic. Out of the tens of millions of gun owners (maybe 80 million?) only a tiny minority are a member of a gun rights organization. This documentary can turn a gun owner into a spokesman for the Second Amendment. But the real power of this film will be its appeal to fence sitters. Hardy has created an excellent documentary that will easily make converts out of them.

This documentary, along with Jeff Snyder's book "Nation of Cowards," belongs in the library of everyone who defends the right to keep and bear arms.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Second Amendment Found, January 12, 2007

By 

W. E. Bailey (Cloudcroft, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Search of the Second Amendment (DVD)

This is the first documentary on the Second Amendment and covers the bases with the best available Second Amendment/Constitutional authorities. The presentations are reasoned and scholarly, but very engaging and readily understandable by the lay person. It is a "must have" for anyone seriously interested in the Second Amendment as a civil right. The documentary sets an incredibly high standard for any documentary which follows it; unless Second Amendment law takes some bizarre turns in the next several years,I don't imagine it will have any competitors soon.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best!, January 3, 2007

By 

Marc H. Richardson (West Newfield, ME USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In Search of the Second Amendment (DVD)

This is truly one of the most accurate and complete works done on the subject of the right to keep and bear arms. This DVD is almost two hours long and lays everything out plainly.

The belief that the Second Amendment was intended to give powers to the states instead of protecting a right to own and carry personal arms is thoroughly demolished with complete accuracy.

As an NRA Certified Firearm Instructor and NRA Membership Recruiter and owner of my own popular pro-gun Web site, there was still things on this DVD that I was able to learn. Well done Mr. Hardy. Get this DVD if you want the truth about the Second Amendment.