Daily Archives: September 17, 2013

People across the web are up in arms today over a Second Amendment explanation given in a Texas high school textbook.

The book under scrutiny is called U.S. History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Exams. School officials say the book is a supplemental textbook for Advanced Placement history students.

The book contains a Bill of Rights study section in which brief explanations for the first ten amendments of the constitution are given. Many across the web are pointing out the questionable summary given for the rights granted to citizens in the Second Amendment.

The book explains the amendment as follows:

The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.

This extremely brief summary of the amendment seems to apply that citizens need to be in a state militia in order to maintain their right to own a firearm a view that many disagree with.

A more commonly held view than the one proposed in the book is that a militia is necessary to protect a free state, and in order to have a militia the citizenry must be armed. Thus, citizens must maintain the right to bear arms.

Politics professor Dave Corbin of Kings College in New York spoke to The Blaze today about the perceived amendment misinterpretation in the text.

The incorrect description of the right to keep and bear arms in a state militia above makes ones right dependent upons ones membership in a state militia, he said. The founders believed, to quote William Blackstone, that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right auxiliary to the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.

Sharon Cox, the Director of Communications and Community Relations for the Denton, Texas Independent School District, released a statement today on the supplemental textbooks place in the schools curriculum. Heres an excerpt from her statement:

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Check Out How This Texas Textbook Summarizes The Second Amendment