December 22, 2023 • 36 mins
In his latest book, Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment, Dr. Noah Shusterman posits how the question isn't the existence of the right to bear arms, but rather, about determining the specific individuals or groups entitled to bear arms. With host JJ, Dr. Shusterman details how, during the American Revolution, Americans needed to, and did, depict their conflict as a battle between civilians and trained soldiers. As such, the framers of the Constitution placed their confidence in citizen soldiers and a "well-regulated militia," a concept that endures in contemporary times (though often erroneously understood). If you've ever wondered "how can I combine the Roman Empire and conversations about gun violence," this is a podcast episode you won't want to miss.
Further reading:
A Well Regulated Right: The Early American Origins of Gun Control (Fordham Law Review)
The Supreme Court Gets a 'Well Regulated Militia' Wrong (Time Magazine)
What Do Guns Mean to Far-Right Extremists? (the Trace)
Citizen Militias in the U.S. Are Moving toward More Violent Extremism (Scientific American)
For more information on Brady, follow us on social media @Bradybuzz or visit our website at bradyunited.org.
Full transcripts and bibliographies of this episode are available at bradyunited.org/podcast.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
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Music provided by: David “Drumcrazie” Curby
Special thanks to Hogan Lovells for their long-standing legal support
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the legal disclaimer, where I tell you
that the views, thoughts andopinion shared on this podcast
belong solely to our guests andhosts and not necessarily Brady
or Brady's affiliates.
Please note this podcastcontains discussions of violence
that some people may finddisturbing.
It's okay, we find itdisturbing too.
Hey, everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red, blue
(00:45):
and Brady.
I'm one of your hosts, jj,flying solo today, with the
exception of my guest, dr NoahSchusterman, who is joining us
to talk about his newest book,arm Citizens thrown from ancient
Rome to the Second Amendment.
Now, if the title doesn't giveyou enough of a hint, today we
are talking about the SecondAmendment, and while we've dug
in a lot on this podcast aboutthe history of the Second
(01:08):
Amendment in terms of how itplayed out and how it was
initially formated, we'velargely focused on that idea of
a well-regulated part of awell-regulated militia, right,
but we haven't dug totally intowhat maybe the authors of the
Second Amendment thought of whenthey thought of a militia, and
so today we're unpackingdirectly that.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Noah Schusterman, I am a history professor at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
I'm from Philadelphia.
I'm from Hong Kong Since Iguess it's around 10 years now
I've been studying the historyof the Second Amendment.
Sure and somewhat differentbackground that I've been an
(01:50):
18th century historian for awhile now.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, I wonder can we trace that out just for a
minute, because I'm always socurious when folks come on the
podcast how you end up goingfrom French Revolution clearly
teaching that in the context ofbeing in Hong Kong at university
right To being like no American.
Second Amendment we got to diginto this.
This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, there's some independent variables there.
I never meant to be a historianof just one.
I wanted to be a historian.
And the way history works isyou have to specialize for a lot
of reasons professionally, justbecause there's so much.
Yeah, sure enough to choose, andthe stuff I learned about
researching as a graduatestudent really pushed me into
(02:32):
this very national approach tohistory and it was kind of a
choose a nation sort ofsituation.
Things have changed a lot amonghistorians since then.
But I'd never planned to spendmy whole career on the French
Revolution and then I wasfinishing up my second book in a
few projects that went alongwith that with Zendio Cabot, and
(02:54):
so that helped me out but wokea lot of people up.
But I also have to say I was atthat point looking for a
project anyway, so I didn't putdown a ton of stuff once Zendio
Cabot finished, another walkinground, just being very angry,
including at myself, for havingwhat did I been doing?
(03:14):
It was my research that I wasjust talking about these other
topics that didn't seem to bechanging anybody's lives in the
present day.
And then the whole Bill ofRights is an 18th century
document.
I'm an 18th century scholar, soI just started looking around
for ways that I could make thoselinks, see what sort of new
(03:36):
angles I had from my ownbackground.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, and with the rise of originalism or appeals,
the idea of originalism, I guessI think that's super fitting.
And before we dig more into thebook, I think we need to maybe
start from terms for folks.
So could you maybe break downfor everyone not just what a
militia is, but what is thisidea of a citizen militia, a
citizen soldier?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Sure, because when militia hits the headlines in
ex-Yugoslavia militias I mean,this is more of a 90s thing
militias in cheatering Africanstates.
It's a very different kind ofinstitution.
What I'm talking about in thisbook is the 18th century, 17th
(04:23):
18th century.
Militias 18th century werecitizens, white men in the US
were required to be part oftheir local machine.
This would be a part-timeactivity, usually not that
frequent, maybe once a month,where they would go train and
members of the militia wereregistered.
(04:45):
This was.
You didn't declare yourself inthe militia, you were required
to participate.
You had your rank, you had yourchain of command.
Usually it's some kind ofrequired equipment, although
everybody seems to think thatthose requirements were not
particularly well adhered to.
But it was an officialinstitution and the main feature
(05:11):
of it, the distinguishingfeature, is that the men in it
were only in it.
Parts of.
They had careers.
Most of them were at farms, butthey had careers and they did
this part-time, as opposed toprofessional soldiers in a
wartime army or in a peacetimestanding army.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And that this was a government-sanctioned
institution.
This wasn't me claiming my ownmilitia Very much.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Now there are movements, shays Rebellion, the
Whiskey Rebellion, with these.
If everybody is required to bein a militia and there's some
sort of uprising, then thepeople involved in that uprising
are in the militia.
There isn't some group of otherpeople.
Now, when we get to the slavesouth, that's not.
(05:56):
Those dynamics change.
But so because all the peoplein say Shays Rebellion were
these were men.
There wasn't a you know what.
I don't know enough about ShaysRebellion to say that women
didn't participate.
So I'm that was.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yes, we talk a lot about history, but we are not a
history podcast, so don't writein about that, not this week.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
But of the ones who make it into the standard
accounts.
They're all men and becausethey're all men in the militia
they declare themselves themilitia.
But the Massachusetts governorfrom the Pennsylvania governor
for the Whiskey Rebellion, theyfelt otherwise.
The like the National Guardtoday that governors are in
charge of the National Guard.
(06:37):
Governors were in charge of thestate militias.
Oil governors were in charge ofthe colonial militias and there
is a kind of interesting thatthe period at the start of the
revolution where you start tohave there's a oil governor who
nobody's listening to andthere's sort of a shadow
government.
The militia is all loyal to theshadow government.
(06:58):
Those things happen.
But yes, this is very muchofficial.
You can't just declare yourselfmilitia and go.
You know, you go play with gunsin the woods.
That wasn't that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Well, and that was just such a different perception
of militias than, I think, whatpeople see in the media or what
you know folks who arehistorians or who don't enjoy
history you know what they, whatthey actually interact with,
and I think that this whole bookis really myth busting from the
ground up, and I think it leadsinto how the founders, how the
writers of these documents, youknow, what were their
conceptions of militias.
(07:30):
And so I'm wondering, like evenfrom a historian's perspective,
were there things or myths thatreally struck out to you, Like
what was something interestingthat came up as you were doing
the research for this book?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
There were a bunch of things that stood out.
One was that there were newthings to be said.
So now you worry when you go onsuch a new topic that you're
just going to be saying thingsthat other people have already
said, and that wasn't the case.
It's to talk a little bitgenerally, like as a researcher
in history.
I sort of start with whatmaterial, what information do I
have, what information can I getand is there anything that
(08:03):
information is trying to telland for history?
If you can get something thatway, you should.
If you're trying to cure cancerand the information you have
isn't giving you a cancer cure,you have to take more aggressive
approaches.
But what I was seeing in thesources wasn't really what I was
seeing, certainly not in theway people discussed the
(08:25):
amendment.
You could find scholarlyarticles that assess this thing,
but it just may have.
People were into the militia,people were so into talking
about it, people were so intopraising it and it's a different
group of people that are intopraising it than people that are
actually reading the AmericanRevolution, say.
(08:45):
But there was just this wholeworld of militia advocates and
these whole sort of thesetheories of the militia.
Listeners can't see, I'm tryingto put my hands into these kind
of rounding or orbital thing,but this system of thought that
fits together, where militiascan accomplish all these great
(09:08):
things and standing armies canaccomplish all these horrible
things, and it just was veryclear to me that this was the
story, not just the story that Iwanted to tell, but this was at
some level the story that theAmericans are telling themselves
in the late 18th century thatwinds up eventually certainly in
(09:28):
this line that a well-regulatedmilitia is necessary for the
security of a free state.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's so interesting because then obviously in the
modern context, we see wherethose dominoes end up falling in
that thought process.
So I'm not asking you to maybetry to condense your book and
align.
Certainly everyone should goread it.
There's links in thedescription of this episode, but
you take a kind of bold stancewhen you open your text with the
phrase the Second Amendment nolonger makes sense, and so I
(09:56):
kind of want to.
Can we start even from there?
Is it just because thisconception of what a militia was
and is are so very different?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Listen, I said that the Second Amendment no longer
makes sense and if people wantto take that as me saying that
what we have now with 40, 45,000gun deaths a year is insane,
then they should, because Ithink it is.
That said, my book doesn't talkabout that at all.
I forget what I put in the verylast pages, but it's really a
(10:27):
book that ends in 1791.
And people ask me about thisand one of the things that
strikes me as sort of run aroundanswer to your question is so
many of the people runningaround today insisting that
their Second Amendment supporteris to their Second Amendment.
Absolutists will also insistthat only half of the amendment
(10:51):
even matters.
How are you a Second Amendmentsupporter if you all need
support half of it?
You can be something, you canhave whatever beliefs you want
to have, but how does that windup being a Second Amendment
supporter?
And I just this line,well-regulated militia people.
That part's easy enough to sortof get a sense of what it is.
(11:12):
Why is that necessary?
For the security of a freestate?
I just think well, maybe thisis my own, me projecting my own
ignorance onto everybody else,which it wouldn't be the first
time, but I couldn't have toldyou what it meant 10 years ago
and I don't think people reallyget that.
I think it's actually a veryclever phrase.
(11:35):
I shouldn't say it's like thatclever phrase.
I think it's a very succinctway of summing up some pretty
interesting theories.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And so how does this differ, this thinking of militia
that's different maybe, fromthis idea of militia.
Now, that's tracked down.
So I guess, what is thehistorical militia versus, maybe
, the current conception?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
A state should be secure, right for it to fail
state.
If you're not secure,somebody's going to conquer you.
But the Republicanunderstanding was that if you
are not the ones ensuring yoursecurity, then you're going to
be at the mercy of the peoplewho are.
If there is a professional armythat is providing for your
(12:23):
security and the leaders in thatarmy decide that actually they
want to take over the wholecountry, then it turns out you
weren't free in the first place.
It's a weird way to think aboutthings now, but this was very
much on the minds of all ofthese militia advocates.
And when I say that the SecondAmendment no longer makes sense
to me, it's that that wholeunderstanding is gone, not even
(12:47):
in the sense that I mean this isa too big an example.
But we no longer approveslavery, we no longer have
slavery.
But if you tell us what slaveryis, we know with it.
We have enough of thehistorical knowledge of what
that was.
All this militia stuff, thestanding armies stuff.
It's just so gone that it andas a result we have pro police,
(13:09):
pro army, second amendmentgroups and it's just as an 18th
century scholar you see that andit just your hint, explodes.
There's such cognitive let's itturn, cognitive disillusion.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, that there's just all of those kind of
threads that don't quite connect.
You tap dancing around them forthe justification of it.
Well, and I actually think thatthat's that you.
So you kind of trace it outthrough the book with there's 10
kind of historical moments orkind of areas that you touch on
getting up to, as you said, Ithink it's 1791, like the end of
(13:43):
your text.
But the fact that it starts andI've never said this on this
podcast we're going to start in.
Rome right, like going all theway back out of that.
Because obviously, when wethink about even who is drafting
right the bill, the bill ofrights, who was engaged in that,
like the founding fathers, allhad this classically backed
education where they would havebeen aware of all of these
historical moments and, for manyof them, had a really big
(14:06):
fascination with the Greeks andRomans.
So I think it kind of startingthere is brilliant to drag out
and I wonder how you won it, whyyour, how your selection panned
out for that, and then why isit important to kind of start
there to get us all the way down?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think the story of Julius Caesar explains a lot.
There's a few things where Ithink that if you mean
understand what these were tothe men of the 18th century,
that you've come a long way tounderstanding what this hit the
men that was.
Maybe it's a littleself-approgrammed and it made me
to put it that way, but that'smy take.
(14:43):
I think that reading one of the1690s authors helps a lot, and
I get that that's a littleobscure.
I met authors from 1698, butJulius Caesar was why they put
that chapter.
I know I talk about otherthings there as well, but first
I should say the man.
They wanted to form a republic.
(15:06):
The republic that was theUnited States of America.
It still is, and Rome was therepublic.
I mean the race publicizedLatin.
This is where the idea comesfrom, and not that they felt
some need to mimic Rome, but ifyou didn't want to be like Rome
in some way, you didn't call ita republic.
And so there's that.
(15:26):
And there was an understandingof what Rome had been and what
would be key, and Rome had grownto greatness as a republic, and
a republic where all of thecitizens who created, afford to
equip themselves, were soldiers.
This is the first militia I'llmess it up if I try to give the
(15:49):
Latin term, but these Latin Ithink it's M-I-L-I-C-E, but of
course it's announced, so it'sgot the clenches and all that,
and so all of the soldiers inthat Roman army were themselves
citizens.
And this was, for a bunch ofthese authors, 17th century,
18th century.
This was the model of how to bea free state.
(16:11):
And there's this whole othernarrative that comes along that
really places these firstcentury BC reforms in the
spotlight where you got to apoint where there were too many
poor citizens and one of thegovernment leaders decides well,
(16:32):
head to all these poor citizensby giving them a career option
as soldiers.
And, as the story goes, thisbasically turns Rome's army from
a citizen's army to aprofessional army.
And this leads up to asituation where Julius Caesar
(16:57):
he's just gone and conqueredGaul it's basically France now
and he's heading back to Romeand he thinks that he's going to
get arrested when he rovesFrance.
And the rule was that you, as aRoman general, couldn't march
your troops into Rome, andspecifically, you couldn't cross
the Rupicon River.
And so I'll do these.
(17:18):
It's a very common term now,that's crossing the Rupicon, but
this was a very specific thingthat Julius Caesar marched Roman
soldiers on Rome itself,because they weren't really
Roman soldiers anymore Once theybecame professionalized, they
were Julius Caesar soldiers andbecause they were loyal to
(17:39):
Caesar and not to Rome, they didwhat the earlier generations of
citizen soldiers never wouldhave done.
Because of that, how Rome'sSenate what was Republican about
the Republic along with waspowerless, and I mean they had
another army that was willing tofight, but Julius Caesar won
(17:59):
the ensuing Civil War and theRepublic never recovered.
Even after Julius Caesar wasassassinated, the Republic never
would recover.
So there's just a bunch oflessons right in there that all
of the Founding Fathers is aterm I tried to like fail All
the Founding Bothers, no.
(18:20):
And so if you have control overthe army, the army is loyal to
you.
You could have as muchpolitical power as you want, and
this was and that kind of powercould kill a Republic.
And because I've seen that didI do think there's some
restubing in this aspect at theSecond Amendment Did Allah can't
(18:42):
govern the military.
The law can't control themilitary.
The law said that the Romangeneral can't arch their troops,
his troops, and cross theRubicon.
So what happens when Caesardoes that.
Well, he has an army.
You can't just say, you can'tjust go give them speeding
tickets.
(19:03):
There's no other force in therecapable of imposing its will on
what's already the largest andmost successful army.
And this was an understanding ofthe relationship between
politics and the military.
They was at the forefront of alot of 18th century thinkers'
(19:25):
minds.
This is why there's a societyof Cincinnati and not a society
of Caesar, because Cincinnatiwas the leader who gave up his
power that he could have, butCaesar was the one who.
Hey, caesar and Cromwell, Ishould say.
But Cromwell's a morecomplicated story to tell.
See, this was you know, so manyof these lessons were there.
(19:47):
And George Washington?
He talks about what he wantsout of his army or his militia.
He talks about, you know, wecan look at the story the
Republic's a precinct wrote andwe can look at what mercenary
armies have done, the damagethey've done.
So that's why I wanted toinclude that.
And this is this is the nicething about writing a book.
(20:12):
I'm an academic but I don'tknow that I can't just write a
journal article or a legalarticle about Julius Caesar.
I've got no business doing that, but I had you know again.
I tried to sort of read thestuff and figure out where it
sent me.
I had no thought, you know, in2014, that it would send me to,
(20:34):
in 2013, 2014, it would send meto looking at teaching role.
But this is, this was the storythat kept coming up.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, when you trace it, trace it backwards.
I just I think it's interestingbecause one of the things that
will come up a lot, particularlywhen we're having kind of legal
arguments around the SecondAmendment or the idea of like
originalism, is that Britishcommon law will get brought up a
lot and the idea that because,understandably, a lot of
especially early Americancolonial decisions are obviously
born out of British law right,it's a, in many cases it's
(21:06):
almost like a copy paste in anew context.
But then to think about, well,where did those laws come from,
where did that conception comefrom, and to trace it out, I
think is actually really helpful, because understanding and
maybe this is me putting on likea little like cultural
anthropologist hat for a momentbut like to trace out how people
are thinking about things whenthey're making the laws that are
then governing folks all theway up into like 2023 and beyond
(21:28):
, like that I think is animportant thing to trace.
And, yeah, you wouldn't expectnecessarily that Caesar is going
to pop up, but to slide back in.
So like, eventually we do andwithin the text we're talking in
like a colonial and then earlypostcolonial America and, if we
can, I'd love to talk reallybriefly about how, like even
(21:48):
within that that quick timechange between so right
pre-revolution and then rightpost-revolution, how this idea
of a militia even changes inthat context so quickly over the
course of like two decades,which really, like in the grand
scheme of history, is a blip.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, historical time is weird, though.
Nothing changes, nothingchanges and everything changes,
and then you try to look throughand see where the clues were.
One of the things that helpedme figure out this whole story,
I guess I should say when I waswriting this.
The title was the Long Road tothe Second Amendment Ten events
(22:26):
in the making of the 18thcentury.
Since the soldier and Virginiadepressed and were like yeah,
that's not a good title, youhave to change it.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
True to the times the armed citizens is very catchy
Well that's why they knew thesethings.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I mean, I don't know big standup, you know the
vanguards and you might justwrite.
So I took the word on it.
But I always had this sensethat there had to be ten, which
turns out didn't have to be ten,but B that this thought of a
road to the Second Amendment,and it's actually pretty far
into the book where I this isgoing to sound dumb but it gets
way but where I realized thatthe road separates for a little
(23:02):
while, that there's all thesetheorists, political writers,
talking about how great themilitia is, and then the
colonists.
You know theorists for the mostpart they're back in treatment
in England and Scotland.
The colonists just have.
They have militias becausethere's no money for soldiers.
(23:24):
There's.
England wasn't in the scentuntil until the Seven Years War,
the French and Indian War.
England wasn't in the scent ofsoldiers out to to North America
.
It was already kind of aquestionable economic benefit in
the first place.
So all these colonists areliving these lives, which
includes militia, indiandelicious, finding its different
(23:45):
roles, enforcing slavery in theSouth and dispossessing Native
Americans along the frontier,and here it kind of figured.
You know it's very littlequirks and rituals in more
settled parts of the North.
But when the British startstationing troops in North
(24:07):
America, especially the troopsthey were stationing around
Boston, in New England, suddenlythat whole tradition of
criticisms of standing army,suddenly that became very
relevant to provide a way forthe calmness to articulate what
they viewed as injustice andtyranny.
And so in that sense the waypeople understood militias
(24:31):
really did change.
Now there was also the wholeMinutemen thing where you know,
massaged other people.
You know a lot more about thisthan they did.
But obviously Massachusetts andnot only Massachusetts really
ramped up their training.
So the Minutemen who fought atLexington and Concord, they were
much more ready than anybodywould have been two years
(24:53):
earlier for that kind ofconfrontation.
So these things had changed.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, there's just that kind of like swerve in the
road of, if you will I'm notgood with road metaphors but
just that little swerve and Iwant to.
Maybe we can do a big picturefor a moment.
But overall, why?
This is a very unfair questionto ask an author.
But, like, why is thisultimately important?
Or possibly kind of what hopesdo you have in terms of a might,
(25:22):
kind of change folks'sawareness of, kind of the
reality of what the SecondAmendment was, and kind of might
but as a result, you know, isit's?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
a fair question, one of the.
I don't know if you put this,but when I was getting trained
as a historian there was some ofthe early lessons I got that
shaped my approach Even.
You know, I was reading a lotof the French Revolution stuff
and there was this whole.
I shouldn't get too into theweeds on this, but there was a
real decline of Marxistexplanations of the 18th century
(25:55):
revolutions and sort ofcriticism of those that people
had spent too much time lookingfor 19th century categories in
18th century history and itreally what people should have
been doing is, you know, tryingto understand the categories of
the people of the 18th centurythemselves used and that the
(26:17):
more you try to tailor yourresearch to contemporary
questions, the more you you misssee what you should be seeing.
Now I think I probably took thata little too far in my first
two books.
You know, like I said, when youcame trying to, you know, to do
the three, I was, you know,angry at myself for the kinds of
(26:40):
work I had been doing.
It's probably a little harsh,but at that moment that was what
I felt.
But I'm still a historian.
I still think that at the baseof this is simple belief that
people should know what happenedand you should spread knowledge
about the past, and so I didn'ttry to come at this with really
(27:03):
specific, concrete goals.
You know, as I say, that I'mkind of wondering.
I've never said it quite likethat, so now I'm having some
self-doubt to start thisinterview.
But you know, there's a lot ofbad history at the second minute
and legal history tends to beworse.
(27:23):
But you know, and I've read badbooks I agree with, I read bad
books I disagree with.
I've read some good books thatI disagree with and I just.
But there's this, you know,we're going to go into the past
and see that there was anindividual right to their arms.
We're going to go into the pastand see that there was not an
(27:46):
individual right to their arms,and to me that's not what
history is.
I mean, you can do a history ofthe individual right to their
arms, but just this sort ofargument based on these very
contemporary notions about whatyou know, what the second image
should be, I, just as ahistorian, I just thought that
whole approach was was awesome,and I guess I'm still willing to
(28:09):
put, you know, the immediatepolitical implications to the
side while I'm on the research.
And what if you come at this asan 18th century scholar before
being a gun scholar or a militiascholar or a free speech
scholar, or it almost doesn'tmatter.
(28:29):
You know that the 18th centurywas very different and you don't
have to worry about it somehowproving you wrong or right, you
know confirmation bias there,because there's nothing to
confirm.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
You're just trying to see where it is.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Like we want to go back to that.
Like when you, when you studythe 18th century there's just
four earlier centuries there'sjust things you know, like I
don't study vaccines, I don'tstudy mortality, but you just
know that around half of the youknow, like everybody you study,
if they have children, aroundhalf of the children will die
before they reach adulthood.
And it's just you know, it'sjust part of the background.
(29:03):
Like this is, we're not tryingto recreate this, this 18th
century rule.
Look, I'm kind of obsessed withthese 1690s texts and all these
ideas that they had aboutsoldiers make better citizens
and citizens make bettersoldiers.
But if anybody like what Iwould say is, if you, for
(29:24):
anybody that really wants tounderstand this mindset, those
texts are the place to start.
Look, some people don't want toread history, and I get that.
For most people who do likereading primary sources, there's
just this energy just jumpingoff of those pages, their anger
at these standing armies, theirglorifications the malicious.
But you probably know betterthan me, your audience, if they
(29:47):
do tolerate Kafka-Ballabschertexts from the 1690s, and so I
wanted to.
I knew that that was going tobe the case.
I knew that it was always goingto be the argument to make that
the 18th century wrote a verydifferent world and it's silly
of us to think that we'restaying true to it.
Now I do think that how do I putthis?
(30:09):
I'm not trying to do anythinglike save the Second Amendment
from you know, like I don't needto do that.
I think there are questionsthat lay behind the Second
Amendment that are still worthasking.
So I always like to go back tothe Virginia Declaration of
Rights and it's okay if I readthis Did a well-regulated
(30:31):
militia composed of the body ofthree people trained to arms the
proper, natural, safe defenseof a free state?
That standing armies in time ofpeace should be avoided as
dangerous to liberty and that inall cases, the military should
be under strict subordination to, and be covered by, the civil
power.
This, to me, is a longerversion of the first half of the
(30:53):
Second Amendment.
Now, this is the VirginiaDeclaration of Rights.
It's the Second Amendment I get.
It's actually in the Bill ofRights, it's in the Constitution
.
It can be another one, but Ilike the way this kind of has
the different parts spelled out.
You can see this, and I do seethis as the ultimate goal in
this is to make sure that thecivil power for us to be,
(31:17):
congress and the president, butespecially Congress can maintain
control over the military, andthat's a legit issue.
It's a legit issue in everycountry.
As Americans, we've kind ofcocky about this because we
haven't had issues like that.
I think, well, I'm going to getin trouble because actual
(31:40):
American historians listen tothis and they'll be able to
point us into big things.
But widespread, or like yeah,myanmar, the military walks in
election and they just decidedthat they were going to take
power instead.
And it's sort of worst casescenarios.
If Mark Milley wasn't the headof the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(32:01):
last January 2021, if Mike Flynnhad been the head of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, then do we havea situation where the military
no longer wishes to be understrict civil recognition to the
civil power?
And if that's the case, do westill have a republic?
And the other thing is, thepeople who wrote this stuff were
(32:23):
very explicit that they didn'tuse the term a military coup.
But a military coup issomething you want to worry
about too early, not too late.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Which makes sense.
If you are actively, as happens, in the revolution, if you are
actively participating in anactive, open rebellion against
your home government, it makessense that your concern is then
is this just going to keeprolling, and will we eventually,
instead of be a new state thatthen falls into a failed state?
It makes sense in that context.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
It does and they really do have to.
It's a very basic dynamic,which is that they fight for
freedom as they understand it,which obviously African
Americans understood itdifferently, but they're
fighting against here and asthey understood it they've got
some sort of oblivion to not beKyren's intern.
(33:15):
But then there's this wholeperiod during the Articles of
Confederation where they don'tfeel like they can govern well,
and often so they need to reducestuff.
Did you ever go see Hamilton?
Did you know the music?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I'm familiar.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, the Thomas, that was a real nice declaration
.
Welcome to the present.
We're running a real nation.
I mean, I think that that has acertain wisdom to it.
But they had complained aboutstanding armies in Boston, so
they can't just be setting themup in Philadelphia and New York.
So, yeah, it was a sort of atough.
(33:50):
I don't even know what's themetaphor.
I'm looking for some very basicmetaphor.
I'm looking for about balancing, but I'm not finding it.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, I think, ultimately, what this book does
a good job of, and I think whatour conversation has pointed out
, is that these things arecomplicated and that's a very
simple thing.
It's a podcast on that shelf.
This is complicated and thatthe sort of surface
understanding that we are, thata lot of folks have of things
which, for most part, is fine,right, like you don't need to be
(34:18):
an 18th century scholarprobably to walk around and
interact with the world, but ifyou are talking about these
things or this is somethingthat's important to you, this is
an important history to knowand to engage with.
And for me, as someone who, aswe increasingly see more and
more laws and rules andregulations that are coming from
this original list and thisisn't a visual medium, so people
(34:40):
can't see my air quotes of avery particular view of history-
Can I just note to them I'mcheating in my head and disdain
the air quotes.
In agreement or air-cruity or no.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
No, disdain it, the idea of originalism.
Don't disdain it, your airquotes.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah Well, I mean, hey, they can't see.
I want to be clear.
But oftentimes, even whenhistorians are not, for a lot of
those rulings famously in theBruin decision historians were
not even used or contacted.
So it's a law scholar's view ofhistory, right?
So I think it's just it'sreally important for folks to be
(35:21):
aware of, like, if we're goingto be engaging in these things,
to know the history behind them.
This is important.
This is vital, so I reallyappreciate it.
So where can folks find it?
Where can they find you andyour work?
Where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
So I have.
The book is from the Universityof Virginia Press, as I've said
, and so they have.
I don't know.
Hopefully you'll have a link onthe page notes.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I do.
I'll have a link in thedescription of the episode.
If they just want to click that, they can go that way.
But here.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I'm sure any decent search engine will find you.
The University of VirginiaPress, and they are.
The book is titled ArmedCitizens.
I have a somewhat outdatedwebpage but I have plans for the
summer to update it.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Well, I'll link to that too and then that way folks
can go check it out.
Please, everyone, check outArmed Citizens.
It definitely gives you anamazing primer on how we got
here, for better or worse.
And thank you again so much, drSchusterman.
This was a delight hey want toshare with the podcast Listeners
can now get in touch with ushere at Red Blue and Brady via
phone or text message.
(36:22):
Simply call or text us at480-744-3452 with your thoughts.
Questions concerns ideas, catpictures, whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Thanks for listening.
As always, brady's lifesavingwork in Congress, the courts and
communities across the countryis made possible thanks to you.
For more information on Bradyor how to get involved in the
fight against gun violence,please like and subscribe to the
podcast.
Get in touch with us atBradyUnitedorg or on social at
BradyBuzz.
Be brave and remember.
(36:54):
Take action, not sides.
This is the legal disclaimer, where I tell you
that the views, thoughts andopinion shared on this podcast
belong solely to our guests andhosts and not necessarily Brady
or Brady's affiliates.
Please note this podcastcontains discussions of violence
that some people may finddisturbing.
It's okay, we find itdisturbing too.
Hey, everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red, blue
(00:45):
and Brady.
I'm one of your hosts, jj,flying solo today, with the
exception of my guest, dr NoahSchusterman, who is joining us
to talk about his newest book,arm Citizens thrown from ancient
Rome to the Second Amendment.
Now, if the title doesn't giveyou enough of a hint, today we
are talking about the SecondAmendment, and while we've dug
in a lot on this podcast aboutthe history of the Second
(01:08):
Amendment in terms of how itplayed out and how it was
initially formated, we'velargely focused on that idea of
a well-regulated part of awell-regulated militia, right,
but we haven't dug totally intowhat maybe the authors of the
Second Amendment thought of whenthey thought of a militia, and
so today we're unpackingdirectly that.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Noah Schusterman, I am a history professor at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
I'm from Philadelphia.
I'm from Hong Kong Since Iguess it's around 10 years now
I've been studying the historyof the Second Amendment.
Sure and somewhat differentbackground that I've been an
(01:50):
18th century historian for awhile now.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, I wonder can we trace that out just for a
minute, because I'm always socurious when folks come on the
podcast how you end up goingfrom French Revolution clearly
teaching that in the context ofbeing in Hong Kong at university
right To being like no American.
Second Amendment we got to diginto this.
This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, there's some independent variables there.
I never meant to be a historianof just one.
I wanted to be a historian.
And the way history works isyou have to specialize for a lot
of reasons professionally, justbecause there's so much.
Yeah, sure enough to choose, andthe stuff I learned about
researching as a graduatestudent really pushed me into
(02:32):
this very national approach tohistory and it was kind of a
choose a nation sort ofsituation.
Things have changed a lot amonghistorians since then.
But I'd never planned to spendmy whole career on the French
Revolution and then I wasfinishing up my second book in a
few projects that went alongwith that with Zendio Cabot, and
(02:54):
so that helped me out but wokea lot of people up.
But I also have to say I was atthat point looking for a
project anyway, so I didn't putdown a ton of stuff once Zendio
Cabot finished, another walkinground, just being very angry,
including at myself, for havingwhat did I been doing?
(03:14):
It was my research that I wasjust talking about these other
topics that didn't seem to bechanging anybody's lives in the
present day.
And then the whole Bill ofRights is an 18th century
document.
I'm an 18th century scholar, soI just started looking around
for ways that I could make thoselinks, see what sort of new
(03:36):
angles I had from my ownbackground.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, and with the rise of originalism or appeals,
the idea of originalism, I guessI think that's super fitting.
And before we dig more into thebook, I think we need to maybe
start from terms for folks.
So could you maybe break downfor everyone not just what a
militia is, but what is thisidea of a citizen militia, a
citizen soldier?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Sure, because when militia hits the headlines in
ex-Yugoslavia militias I mean,this is more of a 90s thing
militias in cheatering Africanstates.
It's a very different kind ofinstitution.
What I'm talking about in thisbook is the 18th century, 17th
(04:23):
18th century.
Militias 18th century werecitizens, white men in the US
were required to be part oftheir local machine.
This would be a part-timeactivity, usually not that
frequent, maybe once a month,where they would go train and
members of the militia wereregistered.
(04:45):
This was.
You didn't declare yourself inthe militia, you were required
to participate.
You had your rank, you had yourchain of command.
Usually it's some kind ofrequired equipment, although
everybody seems to think thatthose requirements were not
particularly well adhered to.
But it was an officialinstitution and the main feature
(05:11):
of it, the distinguishingfeature, is that the men in it
were only in it.
Parts of.
They had careers.
Most of them were at farms, butthey had careers and they did
this part-time, as opposed toprofessional soldiers in a
wartime army or in a peacetimestanding army.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And that this was a government-sanctioned
institution.
This wasn't me claiming my ownmilitia Very much.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Now there are movements, shays Rebellion, the
Whiskey Rebellion, with these.
If everybody is required to bein a militia and there's some
sort of uprising, then thepeople involved in that uprising
are in the militia.
There isn't some group of otherpeople.
Now, when we get to the slavesouth, that's not.
(05:56):
Those dynamics change.
But so because all the peoplein say Shays Rebellion were
these were men.
There wasn't a you know what.
I don't know enough about ShaysRebellion to say that women
didn't participate.
So I'm that was.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yes, we talk a lot about history, but we are not a
history podcast, so don't writein about that, not this week.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
But of the ones who make it into the standard
accounts.
They're all men and becausethey're all men in the militia
they declare themselves themilitia.
But the Massachusetts governorfrom the Pennsylvania governor
for the Whiskey Rebellion, theyfelt otherwise.
The like the National Guardtoday that governors are in
charge of the National Guard.
(06:37):
Governors were in charge of thestate militias.
Oil governors were in charge ofthe colonial militias and there
is a kind of interesting thatthe period at the start of the
revolution where you start tohave there's a oil governor who
nobody's listening to andthere's sort of a shadow
government.
The militia is all loyal to theshadow government.
(06:58):
Those things happen.
But yes, this is very muchofficial.
You can't just declare yourselfmilitia and go.
You know, you go play with gunsin the woods.
That wasn't that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Well, and that was just such a different perception
of militias than, I think, whatpeople see in the media or what
you know folks who arehistorians or who don't enjoy
history you know what they, whatthey actually interact with,
and I think that this whole bookis really myth busting from the
ground up, and I think it leadsinto how the founders, how the
writers of these documents, youknow, what were their
conceptions of militias.
(07:30):
And so I'm wondering, like evenfrom a historian's perspective,
were there things or myths thatreally struck out to you, Like
what was something interestingthat came up as you were doing
the research for this book?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
There were a bunch of things that stood out.
One was that there were newthings to be said.
So now you worry when you go onsuch a new topic that you're
just going to be saying thingsthat other people have already
said, and that wasn't the case.
It's to talk a little bitgenerally, like as a researcher
in history.
I sort of start with whatmaterial, what information do I
have, what information can I getand is there anything that
(08:03):
information is trying to telland for history?
If you can get something thatway, you should.
If you're trying to cure cancerand the information you have
isn't giving you a cancer cure,you have to take more aggressive
approaches.
But what I was seeing in thesources wasn't really what I was
seeing, certainly not in theway people discussed the
(08:25):
amendment.
You could find scholarlyarticles that assess this thing,
but it just may have.
People were into the militia,people were so into talking
about it, people were so intopraising it and it's a different
group of people that are intopraising it than people that are
actually reading the AmericanRevolution, say.
(08:45):
But there was just this wholeworld of militia advocates and
these whole sort of thesetheories of the militia.
Listeners can't see, I'm tryingto put my hands into these kind
of rounding or orbital thing,but this system of thought that
fits together, where militiascan accomplish all these great
(09:08):
things and standing armies canaccomplish all these horrible
things, and it just was veryclear to me that this was the
story, not just the story that Iwanted to tell, but this was at
some level the story that theAmericans are telling themselves
in the late 18th century thatwinds up eventually certainly in
(09:28):
this line that a well-regulatedmilitia is necessary for the
security of a free state.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
It's so interesting because then obviously in the
modern context, we see wherethose dominoes end up falling in
that thought process.
So I'm not asking you to maybetry to condense your book and
align.
Certainly everyone should goread it.
There's links in thedescription of this episode, but
you take a kind of bold stancewhen you open your text with the
phrase the Second Amendment nolonger makes sense, and so I
(09:56):
kind of want to.
Can we start even from there?
Is it just because thisconception of what a militia was
and is are so very different?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Listen, I said that the Second Amendment no longer
makes sense and if people wantto take that as me saying that
what we have now with 40, 45,000gun deaths a year is insane,
then they should, because Ithink it is.
That said, my book doesn't talkabout that at all.
I forget what I put in the verylast pages, but it's really a
(10:27):
book that ends in 1791.
And people ask me about thisand one of the things that
strikes me as sort of run aroundanswer to your question is so
many of the people runningaround today insisting that
their Second Amendment supporteris to their Second Amendment.
Absolutists will also insistthat only half of the amendment
(10:51):
even matters.
How are you a Second Amendmentsupporter if you all need
support half of it?
You can be something, you canhave whatever beliefs you want
to have, but how does that windup being a Second Amendment
supporter?
And I just this line,well-regulated militia people.
That part's easy enough to sortof get a sense of what it is.
(11:12):
Why is that necessary?
For the security of a freestate?
I just think well, maybe thisis my own, me projecting my own
ignorance onto everybody else,which it wouldn't be the first
time, but I couldn't have toldyou what it meant 10 years ago
and I don't think people reallyget that.
I think it's actually a veryclever phrase.
(11:35):
I shouldn't say it's like thatclever phrase.
I think it's a very succinctway of summing up some pretty
interesting theories.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And so how does this differ, this thinking of militia
that's different maybe, fromthis idea of militia.
Now, that's tracked down.
So I guess, what is thehistorical militia versus, maybe
, the current conception?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
A state should be secure, right for it to fail
state.
If you're not secure,somebody's going to conquer you.
But the Republicanunderstanding was that if you
are not the ones ensuring yoursecurity, then you're going to
be at the mercy of the peoplewho are.
If there is a professional armythat is providing for your
(12:23):
security and the leaders in thatarmy decide that actually they
want to take over the wholecountry, then it turns out you
weren't free in the first place.
It's a weird way to think aboutthings now, but this was very
much on the minds of all ofthese militia advocates.
And when I say that the SecondAmendment no longer makes sense
to me, it's that that wholeunderstanding is gone, not even
(12:47):
in the sense that I mean this isa too big an example.
But we no longer approveslavery, we no longer have
slavery.
But if you tell us what slaveryis, we know with it.
We have enough of thehistorical knowledge of what
that was.
All this militia stuff, thestanding armies stuff.
It's just so gone that it andas a result we have pro police,
(13:09):
pro army, second amendmentgroups and it's just as an 18th
century scholar you see that andit just your hint, explodes.
There's such cognitive let's itturn, cognitive disillusion.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, that there's just all of those kind of
threads that don't quite connect.
You tap dancing around them forthe justification of it.
Well, and I actually think thatthat's that you.
So you kind of trace it outthrough the book with there's 10
kind of historical moments orkind of areas that you touch on
getting up to, as you said, Ithink it's 1791, like the end of
(13:43):
your text.
But the fact that it starts andI've never said this on this
podcast we're going to start in.
Rome right, like going all theway back out of that.
Because obviously, when wethink about even who is drafting
right the bill, the bill ofrights, who was engaged in that,
like the founding fathers, allhad this classically backed
education where they would havebeen aware of all of these
historical moments and, for manyof them, had a really big
(14:06):
fascination with the Greeks andRomans.
So I think it kind of startingthere is brilliant to drag out
and I wonder how you won it, whyyour, how your selection panned
out for that, and then why isit important to kind of start
there to get us all the way down?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think the story of Julius Caesar explains a lot.
There's a few things where Ithink that if you mean
understand what these were tothe men of the 18th century,
that you've come a long way tounderstanding what this hit the
men that was.
Maybe it's a littleself-approgrammed and it made me
to put it that way, but that'smy take.
(14:43):
I think that reading one of the1690s authors helps a lot, and
I get that that's a littleobscure.
I met authors from 1698, butJulius Caesar was why they put
that chapter.
I know I talk about otherthings there as well, but first
I should say the man.
They wanted to form a republic.
(15:06):
The republic that was theUnited States of America.
It still is, and Rome was therepublic.
I mean the race publicizedLatin.
This is where the idea comesfrom, and not that they felt
some need to mimic Rome, but ifyou didn't want to be like Rome
in some way, you didn't call ita republic.
And so there's that.
(15:26):
And there was an understandingof what Rome had been and what
would be key, and Rome had grownto greatness as a republic, and
a republic where all of thecitizens who created, afford to
equip themselves, were soldiers.
This is the first militia I'llmess it up if I try to give the
(15:49):
Latin term, but these Latin Ithink it's M-I-L-I-C-E, but of
course it's announced, so it'sgot the clenches and all that,
and so all of the soldiers inthat Roman army were themselves
citizens.
And this was, for a bunch ofthese authors, 17th century,
18th century.
This was the model of how to bea free state.
(16:11):
And there's this whole othernarrative that comes along that
really places these firstcentury BC reforms in the
spotlight where you got to apoint where there were too many
poor citizens and one of thegovernment leaders decides well,
(16:32):
head to all these poor citizensby giving them a career option
as soldiers.
And, as the story goes, thisbasically turns Rome's army from
a citizen's army to aprofessional army.
And this leads up to asituation where Julius Caesar
(16:57):
he's just gone and conqueredGaul it's basically France now
and he's heading back to Romeand he thinks that he's going to
get arrested when he rovesFrance.
And the rule was that you, as aRoman general, couldn't march
your troops into Rome, andspecifically, you couldn't cross
the Rupicon River.
And so I'll do these.
(17:18):
It's a very common term now,that's crossing the Rupicon, but
this was a very specific thingthat Julius Caesar marched Roman
soldiers on Rome itself,because they weren't really
Roman soldiers anymore Once theybecame professionalized, they
were Julius Caesar soldiers andbecause they were loyal to
(17:39):
Caesar and not to Rome, they didwhat the earlier generations of
citizen soldiers never wouldhave done.
Because of that, how Rome'sSenate what was Republican about
the Republic along with waspowerless, and I mean they had
another army that was willing tofight, but Julius Caesar won
(17:59):
the ensuing Civil War and theRepublic never recovered.
Even after Julius Caesar wasassassinated, the Republic never
would recover.
So there's just a bunch oflessons right in there that all
of the Founding Fathers is aterm I tried to like fail All
the Founding Bothers, no.
(18:20):
And so if you have control overthe army, the army is loyal to
you.
You could have as muchpolitical power as you want, and
this was and that kind of powercould kill a Republic.
And because I've seen that didI do think there's some
restubing in this aspect at theSecond Amendment Did Allah can't
(18:42):
govern the military.
The law can't control themilitary.
The law said that the Romangeneral can't arch their troops,
his troops, and cross theRubicon.
So what happens when Caesardoes that.
Well, he has an army.
You can't just say, you can'tjust go give them speeding
tickets.
(19:03):
There's no other force in therecapable of imposing its will on
what's already the largest andmost successful army.
And this was an understanding ofthe relationship between
politics and the military.
They was at the forefront of alot of 18th century thinkers'
(19:25):
minds.
This is why there's a societyof Cincinnati and not a society
of Caesar, because Cincinnatiwas the leader who gave up his
power that he could have, butCaesar was the one who.
Hey, caesar and Cromwell, Ishould say.
But Cromwell's a morecomplicated story to tell.
See, this was you know, so manyof these lessons were there.
(19:47):
And George Washington?
He talks about what he wantsout of his army or his militia.
He talks about, you know, wecan look at the story the
Republic's a precinct wrote andwe can look at what mercenary
armies have done, the damagethey've done.
So that's why I wanted toinclude that.
And this is this is the nicething about writing a book.
(20:12):
I'm an academic but I don'tknow that I can't just write a
journal article or a legalarticle about Julius Caesar.
I've got no business doing that, but I had you know again.
I tried to sort of read thestuff and figure out where it
sent me.
I had no thought, you know, in2014, that it would send me to,
(20:34):
in 2013, 2014, it would send meto looking at teaching role.
But this is, this was the storythat kept coming up.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, when you trace it, trace it backwards.
I just I think it's interestingbecause one of the things that
will come up a lot, particularlywhen we're having kind of legal
arguments around the SecondAmendment or the idea of like
originalism, is that Britishcommon law will get brought up a
lot and the idea that because,understandably, a lot of
especially early Americancolonial decisions are obviously
born out of British law right,it's a, in many cases it's
(21:06):
almost like a copy paste in anew context.
But then to think about, well,where did those laws come from,
where did that conception comefrom, and to trace it out, I
think is actually really helpful, because understanding and
maybe this is me putting on likea little like cultural
anthropologist hat for a momentbut like to trace out how people
are thinking about things whenthey're making the laws that are
then governing folks all theway up into like 2023 and beyond
(21:28):
, like that I think is animportant thing to trace.
And, yeah, you wouldn't expectnecessarily that Caesar is going
to pop up, but to slide back in.
So like, eventually we do andwithin the text we're talking in
like a colonial and then earlypostcolonial America and, if we
can, I'd love to talk reallybriefly about how, like even
(21:48):
within that that quick timechange between so right
pre-revolution and then rightpost-revolution, how this idea
of a militia even changes inthat context so quickly over the
course of like two decades,which really, like in the grand
scheme of history, is a blip.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, historical time is weird, though.
Nothing changes, nothingchanges and everything changes,
and then you try to look throughand see where the clues were.
One of the things that helpedme figure out this whole story,
I guess I should say when I waswriting this.
The title was the Long Road tothe Second Amendment Ten events
(22:26):
in the making of the 18thcentury.
Since the soldier and Virginiadepressed and were like yeah,
that's not a good title, youhave to change it.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
True to the times the armed citizens is very catchy
Well that's why they knew thesethings.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I mean, I don't know big standup, you know the
vanguards and you might justwrite.
So I took the word on it.
But I always had this sensethat there had to be ten, which
turns out didn't have to be ten,but B that this thought of a
road to the Second Amendment,and it's actually pretty far
into the book where I this isgoing to sound dumb but it gets
way but where I realized thatthe road separates for a little
(23:02):
while, that there's all thesetheorists, political writers,
talking about how great themilitia is, and then the
colonists.
You know theorists for the mostpart they're back in treatment
in England and Scotland.
The colonists just have.
They have militias becausethere's no money for soldiers.
(23:24):
There's.
England wasn't in the scentuntil until the Seven Years War,
the French and Indian War.
England wasn't in the scent ofsoldiers out to to North America
.
It was already kind of aquestionable economic benefit in
the first place.
So all these colonists areliving these lives, which
includes militia, indiandelicious, finding its different
(23:45):
roles, enforcing slavery in theSouth and dispossessing Native
Americans along the frontier,and here it kind of figured.
You know it's very littlequirks and rituals in more
settled parts of the North.
But when the British startstationing troops in North
(24:07):
America, especially the troopsthey were stationing around
Boston, in New England, suddenlythat whole tradition of
criticisms of standing army,suddenly that became very
relevant to provide a way forthe calmness to articulate what
they viewed as injustice andtyranny.
And so in that sense the waypeople understood militias
(24:31):
really did change.
Now there was also the wholeMinutemen thing where you know,
massaged other people.
You know a lot more about thisthan they did.
But obviously Massachusetts andnot only Massachusetts really
ramped up their training.
So the Minutemen who fought atLexington and Concord, they were
much more ready than anybodywould have been two years
(24:53):
earlier for that kind ofconfrontation.
So these things had changed.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, there's just that kind of like swerve in the
road of, if you will I'm notgood with road metaphors but
just that little swerve and Iwant to.
Maybe we can do a big picturefor a moment.
But overall, why?
This is a very unfair questionto ask an author.
But, like, why is thisultimately important?
Or possibly kind of what hopesdo you have in terms of a might,
(25:22):
kind of change folks'sawareness of, kind of the
reality of what the SecondAmendment was, and kind of might
but as a result, you know, isit's?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
a fair question, one of the.
I don't know if you put this,but when I was getting trained
as a historian there was some ofthe early lessons I got that
shaped my approach Even.
You know, I was reading a lotof the French Revolution stuff
and there was this whole.
I shouldn't get too into theweeds on this, but there was a
real decline of Marxistexplanations of the 18th century
(25:55):
revolutions and sort ofcriticism of those that people
had spent too much time lookingfor 19th century categories in
18th century history and itreally what people should have
been doing is, you know, tryingto understand the categories of
the people of the 18th centurythemselves used and that the
(26:17):
more you try to tailor yourresearch to contemporary
questions, the more you you misssee what you should be seeing.
Now I think I probably took thata little too far in my first
two books.
You know, like I said, when youcame trying to, you know, to do
the three, I was, you know,angry at myself for the kinds of
(26:40):
work I had been doing.
It's probably a little harsh,but at that moment that was what
I felt.
But I'm still a historian.
I still think that at the baseof this is simple belief that
people should know what happenedand you should spread knowledge
about the past, and so I didn'ttry to come at this with really
(27:03):
specific, concrete goals.
You know, as I say, that I'mkind of wondering.
I've never said it quite likethat, so now I'm having some
self-doubt to start thisinterview.
But you know, there's a lot ofbad history at the second minute
and legal history tends to beworse.
(27:23):
But you know, and I've read badbooks I agree with, I read bad
books I disagree with.
I've read some good books thatI disagree with and I just.
But there's this, you know,we're going to go into the past
and see that there was anindividual right to their arms.
We're going to go into the pastand see that there was not an
(27:46):
individual right to their arms,and to me that's not what
history is.
I mean, you can do a history ofthe individual right to their
arms, but just this sort ofargument based on these very
contemporary notions about whatyou know, what the second image
should be, I, just as ahistorian, I just thought that
whole approach was was awesome,and I guess I'm still willing to
(28:09):
put, you know, the immediatepolitical implications to the
side while I'm on the research.
And what if you come at this asan 18th century scholar before
being a gun scholar or a militiascholar or a free speech
scholar, or it almost doesn'tmatter.
(28:29):
You know that the 18th centurywas very different and you don't
have to worry about it somehowproving you wrong or right, you
know confirmation bias there,because there's nothing to
confirm.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
You're just trying to see where it is.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Like we want to go back to that.
Like when you, when you studythe 18th century there's just
four earlier centuries there'sjust things you know, like I
don't study vaccines, I don'tstudy mortality, but you just
know that around half of the youknow, like everybody you study,
if they have children, aroundhalf of the children will die
before they reach adulthood.
And it's just you know, it'sjust part of the background.
(29:03):
Like this is, we're not tryingto recreate this, this 18th
century rule.
Look, I'm kind of obsessed withthese 1690s texts and all these
ideas that they had aboutsoldiers make better citizens
and citizens make bettersoldiers.
But if anybody like what Iwould say is, if you, for
(29:24):
anybody that really wants tounderstand this mindset, those
texts are the place to start.
Look, some people don't want toread history, and I get that.
For most people who do likereading primary sources, there's
just this energy just jumpingoff of those pages, their anger
at these standing armies, theirglorifications the malicious.
But you probably know betterthan me, your audience, if they
(29:47):
do tolerate Kafka-Ballabschertexts from the 1690s, and so I
wanted to.
I knew that that was going tobe the case.
I knew that it was always goingto be the argument to make that
the 18th century wrote a verydifferent world and it's silly
of us to think that we'restaying true to it.
Now I do think that how do I putthis?
(30:09):
I'm not trying to do anythinglike save the Second Amendment
from you know, like I don't needto do that.
I think there are questionsthat lay behind the Second
Amendment that are still worthasking.
So I always like to go back tothe Virginia Declaration of
Rights and it's okay if I readthis Did a well-regulated
(30:31):
militia composed of the body ofthree people trained to arms the
proper, natural, safe defenseof a free state?
That standing armies in time ofpeace should be avoided as
dangerous to liberty and that inall cases, the military should
be under strict subordination to, and be covered by, the civil
power.
This, to me, is a longerversion of the first half of the
(30:53):
Second Amendment.
Now, this is the VirginiaDeclaration of Rights.
It's the Second Amendment I get.
It's actually in the Bill ofRights, it's in the Constitution
.
It can be another one, but Ilike the way this kind of has
the different parts spelled out.
You can see this, and I do seethis as the ultimate goal in
this is to make sure that thecivil power for us to be,
(31:17):
congress and the president, butespecially Congress can maintain
control over the military, andthat's a legit issue.
It's a legit issue in everycountry.
As Americans, we've kind ofcocky about this because we
haven't had issues like that.
I think, well, I'm going to getin trouble because actual
(31:40):
American historians listen tothis and they'll be able to
point us into big things.
But widespread, or like yeah,myanmar, the military walks in
election and they just decidedthat they were going to take
power instead.
And it's sort of worst casescenarios.
If Mark Milley wasn't the headof the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(32:01):
last January 2021, if Mike Flynnhad been the head of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, then do we havea situation where the military
no longer wishes to be understrict civil recognition to the
civil power?
And if that's the case, do westill have a republic?
And the other thing is, thepeople who wrote this stuff were
(32:23):
very explicit that they didn'tuse the term a military coup.
But a military coup issomething you want to worry
about too early, not too late.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Which makes sense.
If you are actively, as happens, in the revolution, if you are
actively participating in anactive, open rebellion against
your home government, it makessense that your concern is then
is this just going to keeprolling, and will we eventually,
instead of be a new state thatthen falls into a failed state?
It makes sense in that context.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
It does and they really do have to.
It's a very basic dynamic,which is that they fight for
freedom as they understand it,which obviously African
Americans understood itdifferently, but they're
fighting against here and asthey understood it they've got
some sort of oblivion to not beKyren's intern.
(33:15):
But then there's this wholeperiod during the Articles of
Confederation where they don'tfeel like they can govern well,
and often so they need to reducestuff.
Did you ever go see Hamilton?
Did you know the music?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I'm familiar.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, the Thomas, that was a real nice declaration
.
Welcome to the present.
We're running a real nation.
I mean, I think that that has acertain wisdom to it.
But they had complained aboutstanding armies in Boston, so
they can't just be setting themup in Philadelphia and New York.
So, yeah, it was a sort of atough.
(33:50):
I don't even know what's themetaphor.
I'm looking for some very basicmetaphor.
I'm looking for about balancing, but I'm not finding it.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, I think, ultimately, what this book does
a good job of, and I think whatour conversation has pointed out
, is that these things arecomplicated and that's a very
simple thing.
It's a podcast on that shelf.
This is complicated and thatthe sort of surface
understanding that we are, thata lot of folks have of things
which, for most part, is fine,right, like you don't need to be
(34:18):
an 18th century scholarprobably to walk around and
interact with the world, but ifyou are talking about these
things or this is somethingthat's important to you, this is
an important history to knowand to engage with.
And for me, as someone who, aswe increasingly see more and
more laws and rules andregulations that are coming from
this original list and thisisn't a visual medium, so people
(34:40):
can't see my air quotes of avery particular view of history-
Can I just note to them I'mcheating in my head and disdain
the air quotes.
In agreement or air-cruity or no.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
No, disdain it, the idea of originalism.
Don't disdain it, your airquotes.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah Well, I mean, hey, they can't see.
I want to be clear.
But oftentimes, even whenhistorians are not, for a lot of
those rulings famously in theBruin decision historians were
not even used or contacted.
So it's a law scholar's view ofhistory, right?
So I think it's just it'sreally important for folks to be
(35:21):
aware of, like, if we're goingto be engaging in these things,
to know the history behind them.
This is important.
This is vital, so I reallyappreciate it.
So where can folks find it?
Where can they find you andyour work?
Where can they find you?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
So I have.
The book is from the Universityof Virginia Press, as I've said
, and so they have.
I don't know.
Hopefully you'll have a link onthe page notes.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I do.
I'll have a link in thedescription of the episode.
If they just want to click that, they can go that way.
But here.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I'm sure any decent search engine will find you.
The University of VirginiaPress, and they are.
The book is titled ArmedCitizens.
I have a somewhat outdatedwebpage but I have plans for the
summer to update it.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Well, I'll link to that too and then that way folks
can go check it out.
Please, everyone, check outArmed Citizens.
It definitely gives you anamazing primer on how we got
here, for better or worse.
And thank you again so much, drSchusterman.
This was a delight hey want toshare with the podcast Listeners
can now get in touch with ushere at Red Blue and Brady via
phone or text message.
(36:22):
Simply call or text us at480-744-3452 with your thoughts.
Questions concerns ideas, catpictures, whatever.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Thanks for listening.
As always, brady's lifesavingwork in Congress, the courts and
communities across the countryis made possible thanks to you.
For more information on Bradyor how to get involved in the
fight against gun violence,please like and subscribe to the
podcast.
Get in touch with us atBradyUnitedorg or on social at
BradyBuzz.
Be brave and remember.
(36:54):
Take action, not sides.
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