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THE 2nd AMENDMENT: A RIGHT LEFT OUT
by Doctor Linda Karen Miller
A study of U.S. high school history and civics textbooks commissioned
by the NRA Firearm Civil Rights Legal Defense Fund has found discussion
of the Second Amendment largely ignored and at best incomplete. This
is according to Dr. Linda Karen Miller, the study's conductor. These
results offer a challenge for Second Amendment supporters.
In the majority of the books reviewed, errors ranged from omission of
relevant facts to the presentation of incorrect data in discussing the
meaning, history and cultural evolution of the Second Amendment.
Thirty-two texts (24 history and 8 government) were examined, and the
findings show that the Second Amendment was described only 24 times.
Of the original 10 amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, only the
third, prohibiting the quartering of soldiers, and the seventh, the
right to a jury trial, are mentioned less. By comparison, the 17th
Amendment allowing the direct election of senators was described 61
times, and the 23rd Amendment providing the District of Columbia three
electorial votes was described 23 times.
Dr. Miller, an education consultant and teacher in Virginia, has been
awarded the George Washington Medal from the Valley Forge Freedom Foun-
dation, been named the Law Educator of the Year by the American Lawyers
Auxiliary and serves as an educational consultant for Newsweek. She
looked at a number of key topics to judge the treatment of the Second
Amendment. In particular, she looked at how the texts described its
origins, its foundation in English heritage and its prominence in the
Bill of Rights. Further, Dr. Miller looked for inclusion of descrip-
tions of legislative efforts to restrict gun-owners rights through the
years. Dr. Miller found the texts showed clear deficiencies in almost
every category. The discussion of the Second Amendment was either per-
functory, or in most cases, completely omitted. Ideas as vital as the
English heritage origin of the rule of law, state constitutional
guarantees of the right to bear arms, Black Codes and the 14th Amend-
ment were widely ignored. In brief, Dr. Miller's findings included:
*English Heritage: Of the 32 authors surveyed, only six described our
English heritage. Only one explained that the right to keep and bear
arms evolved from this heritage.
*Colonial Governments: Seven authors covered the colonial governments
None described the colonial origins of the Second Amendment.
*State Governments: Fifteen discussed this topic. None even mention-
ed that 43 states include a right to keep and bear arms in their
state bill of rights.
*Bill of Rights: All of the authors described the Bill of Rights, but
only 17 described the right to keep and bear arms. None discussed
its adoption.
*1866 Civil Rights Act: Nine authors covered this topic, but none ex-
plained that it meant an expansion of the right to keep and bear arms
*14th Amendment: Twenty-two of the authors covered this amendment.
None of them explained that "equal protection of the laws" and rights
of citizens also included the right to keep and bear arms.
*Black Codes: Thirty-one authors discussed the Black Codes, but only
11 explained that the codes denied Blacks the right to keep and bear
arms.
The study looked at the presentation of key U.S. Supreme Court decis-
ions on the Second Amendment and found the authors widely ignored these
cases: U.S. v. Miller, U.S. v. Cruikshank and Presser v. Illinois. De-
scribed only once, Miller was misinterpreted; Cruikshank was described
in three instances. Historical events are presented as if they sprang
forth from a political or intellectual vaccum, the study found. In
short, the Second Amendment is presented as an idea that simply exists,
without background or historical context.
Dr. Miller described the situation as follows: "The history of the
Second Amendment is not only unmoored from its English heritage and
forgotten in major historical events in the U.S. history and
U.S. government textbooks, but that history has been set adrift in the
textbooks, floundering in the political ideologies of the authors, un-
substantiated by historical fact or current jurisprudence." There is
little continuity of ideas, nor are sufficient precedents provided;
the discussion of controversial topics is muted or completely avoided.
The inadequacies of the texts require that gun owners take extra mea-
sures to provide Second Amendment books and other information to school
and community libraries to fill the void. For further information on
the developement of the Second Amendment and its historical evolution,
write to the NRA-ILA Research and Information Division, 1600 Rhode
Island Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036.
AMERICAN RIFLEMAN, February 1993, p. 33.
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