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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 101.1 | The History Cooperative
101.1  
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March, 2005
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Reviews

The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment
Taming Political Violence in a Constitutional Republic

By David C. Williams
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. x, 397. Notes, index. $45.00.)

Almost thirty years ago, in The Gun in America (1975), Lee Kennett and James Anderson concluded that "time works against the gun" (p. 255). Yet, since this prediction, debates over the Second Amendment have only continued, heating with time. Now enters David Williams, John S. Hastings Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, who proposes to reduce the heat by constructing a new myth for these new times. An early participant in the most recent wave of polemical battles, Williams uses this book to solidify his arguments, while answering friends and critics—particularly Gary Wills, Saul Cornell, Robert Cover, and Sanford Levinson—and dismissing by silence those who composed the friendly brief in U.S. v Emerson (2001). 1
      The book is divided into three parts: the first is a foray into the period of the founding; the second, a survey of the complex present understandings of myths and political violence; the third, a proposed remedy for the current confusions over the meaning and significance of the Second Amendment and, by implication, a prescription for judicial action. Here Williams concludes that as "disciplining violence is the first task of constitutional order, it is also the first duty of citizenship" (p. 313). . . .
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