Argument Against State Ratification

After all the arguing, the ratification process was in full force. The responsive argument, according to Vandercoy, widely made was that Congress might be able to confine the existing militia force, all armed citizens, to a select militia made up of a small segment of the population. The delegates were trying to eliminate the possibility that game laws, used effectively in England at different points to disarm the population, would not produce a similar result in America. He summarizes the state ratification process; three states ratified while expressing their understanding that the people had a right to bear arms, and two states refused to ratify until individual rights were recognized as amendments.
English history made two things clear to the American

It would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear arms to state governments, since the principle on which our policy is based, as stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government, at any level, can become oppressive of our rights. Therefore, we must be prepared to defend ourselves against its abuses, but the movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to our capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human beings are capable of moral responsibility. This is a second and deeper reason that the defense of the 2nd Amendment is essential to the defense of liberty. Advocates of banning guns think we can substitute material things for human self-control, but this approach will not wash. It is the human moral that will save us from violence, not the presence or absence of