Description: Unique and well-researched, this study concentrates on the right to keep and bear arms and analyzes the incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment. Examining the history of the recognition of the right of freedmen to keep and bear arms in the period between 1866 and 1876, this comprehensive volume analyzes the extent to which American political society was willing to secure the same civil rights to all without regard to race or previous condition of slavery.
Brief description: Stephen P. Halbrook is a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute who has argued and won three constitutional law cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Dr. Halbrook is the author of eight books including The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms; Securing Civil Rights: Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right To Bear Arms; That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right; A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees; Target Switzerland (also in German, French, Italian, and Polish editions); and The Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Florida State University and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. His popular articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, San Antonio Express-News, Environmental Forum, USA Today, and Washington Times, and he has appeared on numerous national TV/radio programs such as "The Phil Donahue Show" and programs on Fox Business Network, Court TV, Voice of America, CNN, and C-SPAN.
Review Quotes: "In his thorough analysis of Congressional debates, Halbrook makes quite clear the point that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment saw Second Amendment guarantees as essential to the political liberty of the individual American citizen." --American Journal of Legal History