The English Bill of Rights (1689) has a very oddly worded guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms, one that the gun control crowd has always argued demonstrates that the right was so limited as to be meaningless.. So imagine my surprise at finding a statement from the royal prosecutor in a trial of revolutionaries in 1820 who asserted that carrying arms to a public meeting was protected:
Gentlemen, he refers to the Bill of Rights. You will see what
the Bill of Rights says upon that subject. It provides that,
" The subjects which are Protestants may have arms for
their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law-"
But are arms suitable to the condition of people in the
ordinary class of life, and are they allowed bylaw? A man has a clear right to
arms to protect himself in his housc. A man has a clear right to ' protect
himself when he is going singly or
in a small party
upon the road where he is travelling or going for the ordinary purposes of
business. But l have no difficulty
in saying you
have no right to carry arms to a public meeting, if the number of arms which
are so carried are calculated to produce terror and alarm; and if you could be
at liberty to carry arms upon an expectation that by possibility there might be
an attack at the place, that would be an excuse for carrying arms in every
instance when you went to a public meeting.(a.) Therefore, I have no difficulty
in saying persons are not warranted in carrying arms to a public meeting, if
they are calculated to create terror and alarm.
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