Submitted by Clayton E. Cramer, Nov 26, 2007 13:32

The U.S. Senate actually debated adding "for the common defence" to the Second Amendment, and chose not to do so. This alone makes the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution's language irrelevant to understanding the Second Amendment. It is important, however, to consider what John Adams, who was the principal author of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution thought of the right to keep and bear arms, and why that "for the common defence" clause is in there.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of the Governments of the United States of America published a few years later expressed concern about militias that were not under the direction of a government, and the dangers of what persons so armed might do. But he also made a very specific exception for self-defense: "It must be made a sacred maxim, that the militia obey the executive power, which represents the whole people in the execution of laws. To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defence, or by partial orders of towns, counties, or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government." [The Works of John Adams (Boston: 1851), 6:197, emphasis added]

Adams was worried about such incidents as Shays' Rebelliion, and would doubtless have regarded the "militia movement" of the 1990s with similar concern. But Adams made a specific exception to his concerns for "private self-defence." Adams had similarly acknowledged during his defense of the British soldiers who were part of the Boston Massacre that everyone in America had a right to be armed for self-defense, not for offense. It is hard to imagine Adams tolerating something as absurd as the District of Columbia's 1976 handgun ban.

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