The second issue in this paper is about rebellions throughout American history. There were several rebellions, but Shays’ Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and Fries’s Rebellion were an important part of the militia debate. “Shays’s Rebellion was the largest violent uprising in the new nation’s history, would become the first test of the radical potential of the militia and the right to bear arms in post-Revolutionary America”(Cornell, 31). Shays’s Rebellion revealed a tension in American constitutional theory if the militia was an agent of government authority or a popular system serving as a check on government. The notion that the militia refused to enforce an unjust law or took up arms against the government became the most important ideas in mental political confusion of the Revolutionary era. The consequence of the rebellion had influenced the content of the Constitution. Although the rebellion collapsed so quickly, it had an important effect on American constitutional development that motivated to reform the Articles of Confederation. (p.33-36) Following in the tradition of Shays, the Whiskey Rebellion in which farmers took up arms against the whiskey excise tax in western Pennsylvania believe that the people might bear arms to defend liberty. The tax protest had become an armed rebellion and Washington had to lead federal and state militia to put down. It appropriated the rituals and rhetoric of the militia muster and used the language of civic obligation and republican liberty. However, their idea that assembling in arms for liberty was rejected because Republicans believed that bearing arms was only for a well-regulated militia under state authority. The rebellion easily fell apart due to government forces (Cornell, 76-...
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... Although the danger of a standing army and the threat to the militia were discussed in all of the state ratification conventions, that every man may be armed was the prominent issue in Virginia. “As far as the danger of a standing army was concerned, Federalists maintained that Congress would tightly control such an army through the power of the purse”(p.54). All five state conventions in Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, and New Hampshire set up a prohibition on standing armies in peace time, and four conventions recommended the protection for the right to bear arms. On the other hand, in the pro-Shaysite regions of backcountry Massachusetts, the Constitution gave an idea that a standing army will be immediately formed.(Cornell, 50-59)
Works Cited
A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Saul Cornell
Carter, Gregg Lee, ed. “Federal Gun Laws.” Gun Control in the United States: A Reference
Professor Thomas Slaughter has provided a most thorough overview of the Whiskey Rebellion, which he asserts had by the time this book was conceived nearly two centuries after the episode transpired, had become a largely forgotten chapter of our nation's history since the time of the Civil War. He cites as direct evidence of this fact the almost complete absence of any mention of the event in many contemporary textbooks of the conservative era of the 1980's, which this reviewer can attest to as well, having been a high school student in the late 1970's, who never heard of the Whiskey Rebellion until years later. Building off of his own dissertation on the topic, the author convincingly shows that the Whiskey Rebellion was in fact an event of tremendous importance for the future of the fledgling United States of America, which was spawned by the head-long collision of a variety of far-reaching forces and factors in the still quite primitive environs of western Pennsylvania that summer and fall. Slaughter contends that one must place the frontier at the center of the great political debates of the era and fully explore the ideological, social, political, and personal contexts surrounding the episode in order to fully understand the importance of its place in American history. In doing so the author has produced a very readable work that may be enjoyed by casual readers, who will likely find the individual vignettes which open each chapter particularly fascinating, and a highly useful basis of further research by future scholars into the importance of the frontier region as it relates to events on a national scale in those early days of the republic.
The Shays Rebellion were series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers. However, protests began before Shays Rebellion, the Massachusetts protest convention, circa of 1780 is a prime example of this, “...The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers....”.(B) Many farmers in this area suffered from high debt as they tried to start new farms. Unlike many other state legislatures in the 1780s, the Massachusetts government didn't respond to the economic crisis . As a result local sheriffs seized many farms and some farmers who couldn't pay their debts were put in prison.These conditions led to the first major armed rebellion in the post-Revolutionary United States called Shays Rebellion. Anti-Federalist were primality poor uneducated farmers. An exception of a the poor Anti Federalist stereotype is George Mason, whom is a huge political influence of the Bill of Rights, exploits his ideology in his Virginia Bill of Rights “That
Cress argues that the right to bear arms should be given only to organized militia groups. However, it was clear that the Founding Fathers made no distinction between the militia and the people. The Second Amendment allows individuals to own guns and to be able to protect themselves. If the Founding Fathers wanted gun ownership to be for militias only, they would have specifically stated that in the Second Amendment. Cress ineffectively argues that the militias were an important part of protecting the people when in reality they were not well-trained and may not have been committed to the cause which rendered them ineffective. Therefore, Cress’ argument is not reflective of the attitudes of the Founding
He gives a lengthy account of events that led to the Second Amendment; the people carried a deep-seated fear of a national army, this is because of their history of oppression by the European monarchs. Consequently, the people of the individual states were creating their own militia and during the Valley Forge men had refused to take an oath to the United States, instead claiming that his state was his country. There arose a need for a national army. “The same First Congress that approved the right to keep and bear arms also limited the nation army to 840 men; Congress in the Second Amendment then
Cornell, Saul. A Well-regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
Doeden, Matt. Gun Control: Preventing Violence or Crushing Constitutional Rights? Minneapolis: Lerner, 2012. 7- 61-63. Print.
The elite opted to prevent rebellions which voiced the opinions of disregarded members of society such as women, slaves, indentured servants, and men who didn't own land, by intervening and taking them into their own hands because they wanted to preserve their power. In 1780, Shay's rebellion, led by Daniel Shay, a veteran of the Battle of Bunker Hill, allowed farmers who were unable to pay their mortgage, to speak out. Creating chaos amongst the peaceful streets of Springfield, armed farmers were stopped by state militia. Shay's rebellion led way to the Philadelphia Convention in which fifty-five men representing twelve states congregated on 1787, in proposal of drafting a new constitution. Through the occurrence of the American Revolution, they were aware of the power that their people were able to execute and wanted to stabilize the government by creating a new Constitution....
Carter, Gregg. Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Print.
This debate has produced two familiar interpretations of the Second Amendment. Advocates of stricter gun control laws have tended to stress that the amendment’s militia clause guarantees nothing to the individual and that it only protects the states’ rights to be able to maintain organized military units. These people argue that the Second Amendment was merely used to place the states’ organized military forces beyond the federal government’s power to be able to disarm them. This would guarantee that the states would always have sufficient force at their command to abolish federal restraints on their rights and to resist by arms if necessary. T...
Wilson, H. (2007). Guns, gun control, and elections. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Professional champions of civil rights and civil liberties have been unwilling to defend the underlying principle of the right to arms. Even the conservative defense has been timid and often inept, tied less, one suspects, to abiding principle and more to the dynamics of contemporary Republican politics. Thus a right older than the Republic, one that the drafters of two constitutional amendments the Second and the Fourteenth intended to protect, and a right whose critical importance has been painfully revealed by twentieth-century history, is left undefended by the lawyers, writers, and scholars we routinely expect to defend other constitutional rights. Instead, the Second Amendment’s intellectual as well as political defense has been left in the unlikely hands of the National Rifle Association (NRA). And although the NRA deserves considerably better than the demonized reputation it has acquired, it should not be the sole or even principal voice in defense of a major constitutional provision.
The topic of gun control comes with a widely spilt crowd. Some people believe that gun control is essential, especially in today’s world. Some people think gun control will help with decreasing crime and making the nation a safer place for us to live. On the other hand, there are people who speak of anti-gun control. These people believe the right to bear arms would make our nation a safe place to live due to the fact that we would have protection. Do you think the Government has the right to make something illegal like the right to bear arm? In my opinion, the Government cannot simply because it will be an offence to our founding fathers, who gave us the national right to bear arm. Also, for making
While the Founding Fathers of this country were developing the system of government, as set forth in the Constitution, many feared that a standing army controlled by a strong central government would leave them helpless. The federal Constitution contained no provisions to prohibit a standing army or allow states to create their own militias. The Constitution was signed by thirty-nine men from the twelve states represented at the Constitutional Convention on September 17 1787; three delegates refused to sign because of the absence of a bill of rights. Two years later, the First Congress agreed on twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution. During this time, debate focused on a standing army versus a state militia and citizens' rights, and even obligations, to carry arms. Before addressing arms and the militia in the Bill of Rights, however, two militia clauses were included in the U.S. Constitution. The militia clauses say that Congress shall have power to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
McClurg, Andrew J. Gun Control and Gun Rights: A Reader and Guide. New York: New York UP, 2002. Print.