This book should be required reading for anyone going into law or government. Halbrook thoroughly traces the history of the right of self defense and arms from antiquity to our own 2nd Amendment. He documents the authors intent through their own writings from the times and traces it's treatment in the courts from inception to the present. Far from being his own "goofy" interpretation the individual right interpretation is now considered the "standard" interpretation by even liberal constitutional scholars. Anyone who says otherwise has either not read the book or is lieing to themselves and others. Sources are given through exhaustive cites. You don't have to believe Halbrook, you can go directly to his sources. Like others have pointed out, read what the courts actually said in Cruikshank and Miller and you will see they are almost opposite of what most gun control advocates claim.

I just finished this book in its audio-book format, the format I best enjoy when making long commutes between Houston and Dallas. Halbrook demonstrates a very high level of erudition, especially in his marshaling of historical evidence for the intellectual history of the right to keep and bear arms, which Halbrook irrefutably demonstrates was always understood first and foremost as a natural right of self-defense pre-dating the US Constitution and merely recognized implicitly by the 2nd Amendment. He demonstrates the origin of the term "a well-regulated militia" as denoting the whole of the populace, armed against aggression, tyranny, and usurpation, either against criminal elements seeking to do harm to the individual, or to repel a foreign invasion. Indeed, in earlier drafts of what was to become the 2nd Amendment, it was more explicitly defined "a well regulated militia, consisting of the whole body of the people", which was later (regrettably) deleted from the 2nd Amendment merely for brevity's sake, though in hindsight this was probably a mistake as later generations (and regrettably some ill-informed courts) have misunderstood the truncated version and made much mischief on its account. But in the framer's day there was no mistake about what "a well-regulated militia" (meaning well-trained/drilled/proficient in the use of arms, incidentally) meant--it meant every able bodied male in the country, as opposed to a standing army, OR a select militia like the National Guard, which was also (rightly) regarded as little better than a professional standing army and just as much a threat to Liberty. So they most emphatically did NOT mean "something like the National Guard", as the anti-rights crowd would have it; That sort of specialized, select 'militia' was explicitly rejected.

I shy from giving Halbrook 5 stars because admittedly the writing can tend to be a little bit dry, and it is a tough slog to work your way through this book, even in audio-book format. I had initially started this book in paperback but had to switch to audio-book if I was ever going to finish it, as a way of forcing myself through the material, thanks to a lengthy business trip to the North Texas region. It was ultimately totally worth it, and I'm glad to have the paperback as a reference work to refer back to. As others have stated, this is the definitive intellectual history of the origins of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and its subsequent legal history.

This ought not be a partisan, left-versus-right issue; I agree wholeheartedly with Halbrook here and yet I'm a libertarian Socialist and anti-capitalist Green. Halbrook agrees, incidentally, in the last chapter, citing, among others, the Black Panther Party (for that matter, he could have also cited the Weather Underground. Moreover, some hippies living in poorer urban areas did in fact carry guns for self-defense, their opposition to the Vietnam War notwithstanding)

It's a human rights issue that was clearly understood and accepted until roughly the late 1960s and 1970s, when a few poorly reasoned court decisions were made, and some very bad public policy, such as DC's gun ban; The reason the DC gun-ban was shot down recently by the DC Circuit Court is because the anti-gun argument is built on a house of cards and ought to be struck down, and I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will agree with the lower court ruling in this matter.

The most interesting part of Halbrook's work is the ambivalence he highlights about the legal opinion of the status of concealed weaponry.
It is something to do with the nature of 19th Century society, I think, where open carry was preferred to concealed carry...Open carry was "manly" while concealed carry was "dastardly", "underhanded", etc. I do not share these opinions, and some courts have not either, but others have. I think Concealed Carry has been a boon for reducing crime everywhere it's been enacted into law in our day, and it actually serves as a better deterrent than open carry, since anyone, even women and the elderly, could potentially be carrying concealed. Halbrook seems to conclude that more and more courts are viewing concealed carry as protected by the 2nd Amendment. Concealed carry licensing should in point of fact not even be necessary--the 2nd Amendment (via th 14th Amendment) should suffice country-wide--but we're sadly a long way away from that state of affairs, though the upcoming DC case could send shock-waves through other highly restricted bans like Chicago's.

You don't have to be a right-wing ideologue to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to accept our sucky for-profit health care system to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to be an asinine global warming skeptic to be pro-RKBA. You don't have to be anti-union or anti-abortion to be pro-RKBA.

You just have to have a healthy respect for human rights and for the lessons of history; My fellow Leftists who ARE anti-RKBA ought to be ashamed of the very racist roots of nearly all gun-control legislation, both in the 19th century--and in the 20th. There are Democrats, Greens, even Anarcho-Syndicalist Socialists who are quite proud to be pro-RKBA.

Read this book, learn the history, and learn to just say no to anti-gun policies and those who would disarm us.

Is your name, "Pure Propaganda" intentionally or unintentionally descriptive of your methods? Oh well, no matter.

You say, "The author of the book, Stephen P. Halbrook, is an NRA attorney. That being the case, the content of the book is quite predictable."

But, I think you got your logic backwards. What you meant to say is:

"The author of the book, Stephen P. Halbrook, is a passionate advocate for 2nd amendment rights. That being the case, his employment as an NRA attorney is quite predictable."

The dismissal of ideological opponents for predictably, logically, and benignly acting on their convictions is a hallmark of the socialist and totalitarian. You are a typical example of this approach to opposing viewpoints. How about addressing some of the substance of Mr. Halbrook's thesis? No. That would require thinking. Apparently, your use of the "The devil can quote scripture" tactic has led you to mistakenly assume that you have proved the weakness of scripture. Even if Mr. Halbrook were the "devil" (he is certainly not), you are still left with the task of refuting the "scripture". This is apparently an obscure idea to leftists. That's how they got that way.

This book provides information, from early western history through the late 20th century, about the individual right to keep and bear arms in self defense and in defense of the community. Halbrook destroys the myth, propagated by gun grabbers, that the 2nd Amendment is the right to a state militia, or any other government organization. He exposes the fact that throughout history, the politically adept have noted that keeping arms in the hands of individuals supports a free state, and that this fact is exactly why the founding fathers intended to protect the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, not only to protect their persons and property, and their communities, but even to hunt! (Game laws in England had been created specifically to keep peasants from hunting, so that it could be completely enjoyed by the wealthy landed--but even the creators of the game laws respected the rights of all to self-defense, and the practicality with which a free and well-armed people could defend their community.)

Reading this informative book will arm you with the information you need to refute the absurd claims of gun grabbers that the notion of the individual right to keep and bear arms is somehow new, or alternatively, outdated, or that the supreme court has ever settled this matter in their favor--in fact it demonstrates that the 2nd Amendment affirmed a centuries-old right that had already existed, and had continued to exist, well into the 20th century. After reading the thorough treatment of the topic this book provides, one becomes certain that the ancient right remains instrumental in protecting American liberty, and that it is no accident that where liberty is most trampled is also where the right is most trampled. What's more, one becomes certain that the United States is at a point in history where we will either once again demand the uninfringed right, or will descend into tyranny.