Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment

by Noah Shusterman

Although much has changed in the United States since the eighteenth century, our framework for gun laws still largely relies on the Second Amendment and the patterns that emerged in the colonial era. America has long been a heavily armed, and racially divided, society, yet few citizens understand either why militias appealed to the founding fathers or the role that militias played in North American rebellions, in which they often functioned as repressive―and racist―domestic forces. In  Armed Citizens,  Noah Shusterman explains for a general reader what eighteenth-century militias were and why the authors of the Constitution believed them to be necessary to the security of a free state. Suggesting that the question was never whether there was a right to bear arms, but rather, who had the right to bear arms, Shusterman begins with the lessons that the founding generation took from the history of Ancient Rome and Machiavelli’s reinterpretation of those myths during the Renaissance. He then turns to the rise of France’s professional army during seventeenth-century Europe and the fear that it inspired in England. Shusterman shows how this fear led British writers to begin praising citizens’ militias, at the same time that colonial America had come to rely on those militias as a means of defense and as a system to police enslaved peoples. Thus the start of the Revolution allowed Americans to portray their struggle as a war of citizens against professional soldiers, leading the authors of the Constitution to place their trust in citizen soldiers and a "well-regulated militia," an idea that persists to this day.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2020

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Armed Citizens was an interesting read. However, the book had several fatal flaws. First, the book jacket, introduction, and online advertising did not match the contents of the book. The advertising focused on the Founding Fathers’ (a term not used in the text), understanding of militias, including a historical perspective. Unfortunately, several of the historical sections admit that the Founding Fathers never citied the authors mentioned, though the Fathers’ idea may have aligned.

Second, Armed Citizens’ greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Shusterman’s brilliance is describing 10 (11 if you count the epilogue), events and how those events shaped the 18th Century’s views of militias. These chapters are excellent summaries of the events and the factors leading to and resulting from them. However, the brevity, often 15-20 pages per event, forces Shusterman to make leaps in his argument, often forging citations. These primers often over simplify the events, making militias the primary focus of events that have more complex backgrounds.

Overall an interesting and informative read. Shusterman also points out many abuses that occurred in the Colonial and early American militia system, a point not to be overlooked.