| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel. The Militia and the Right to Arms, or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent. (Constitutional Conflicts.) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2002. Pp. x, 338. $19.95.
Over the past decade, law professors regularly churned out essays dealing with the Second Amendment. Indeed, they have created a veritable cottage industry devoted to ever more obscure readings of that amendment. Consequently, law reviews ranging from the most prestigious to the least distinguished offer their readers any number of interpretations of the original meaning as well as the manner in which it should be read today. The result has been an abundance of sound and fury and a dearth of intellectual substance. All suffer from the same handicap: a lack of understanding of the historical context within which the Second Amendment was written.	1
By no stretch of the imagination can H. Richard Uviller and William C. Merkel be accused of such weakness. Their book's endnotes reveal intensive research into the best historical literature concerned with the revolutionary era as well as the essential primary sources. This is the single most sound and sophisticated study yet to appear dealing with the historical origins of the Second Amendment as well as the meaning it bears for our society today.	. . .

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