throw0112a

>Nunn vs Georgia (1846) [...]

An in Alabama State vs Reid (1840) the 'court held that the law “to suppress the evil practice of carrying weapons secretly,” did not violate the Alabama constitution. While the legislature could not prevent the carrying of arms, it did retain the right “to enact laws in regard to the manner in which arms shall be borne.” Because the restriction on concealed carry was not a prohibition on the right, it was within the ambit of the legislature to restrict concealed carry.[10]'

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn_v._Georgia

So open carry if fine (?), but concealed can be regulated.

Canada also comes with common law going back to England, and the Supreme Court there ruled that while the right to self-defence exists, the right to arms does not.

But when Mason said "whole people", he was talking about the make up of the militia, and not the personal rights of said militia. (It's on this basis that conscription is legal in the US and one can be forced into the military (or be an objector). )

> I suspect however that Jefferson would have extended his support for the right to cover ones stagecoach and personal property when traveling down the right of way..

I suspect however that Jefferson would not have ....

It's useless to speculate. We can all pull things out of thin air. What did he write down?

> "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own land or tenements]" -Thomas Jefferson's proposal of language to add to the Virginia Constitution

A proposal which was rejected AFAIK, and so all the others around him thought it inappropriate. What was actually passed:

> That a well-regulated Militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State; that Standing Armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

No mention of individual rights to "keep and bear arms". In the recorded debate there was no mention in the Virginia debates of individuals carrying arms, but rather the debate was in the context of whether the government would provide arms for the militia.

Also, the phrase "bear arms" was, grammatically in that time period, generally used to refer to military soldiers having weapons, not civilians. It is inappropriate to take the words individually, but rather the phrase must be taken as a whole.

The ‘individual mandate’ of citizens having the right to firearms, when they’re not part of a state-level Militia, seems to be a recent phenomenon:

> The U.S. Supreme Court had never, until 2008, suggested even once that there was any such right. Warren Burger, the arch-conservative Supreme Court justice appointed by Richard Nixon, in an interview in 1991 described the then-new idea of an individual right to bear arms as “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

* http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/article28078752....

There's a book mentioned in the above article called "The Second Amendment: A Biography”, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet. The author, Michael Waldman, has some good interviews and talks online. It was released in 2014 and most of them are from then. These two are pretty good (about an hour each):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IopMFON6BNM

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxTOBh_AZJY