Book review: The Second Amendment: A Biography, by Michael Waldman

by Michael Waldman
Simon & Schuster
4 stars
David Ulin

The Second Amendment is just 27 words long: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." But in that single sentence the essence of the United States is revealed.

"A living Constitution," Michael Waldman writes in The Second Amendment, "does not discard the spirit of the document, but seeks to apply its timeless principles to modern challenges that could not have been imagined by the Framers or their contemporaries. It reflects with frankness that our sense of human dignity has, in fact, evolved."

These notions of dignity and evolution motivate the book, which offers a smart if occasionally frustrating historical overview of America's 200-plus-year relationship with guns.

According to pro-gun activists, the right to own weapons is an essential aspect of American identity, an expression of independence. The reality, Waldman argues, is more nuanced and has developed over time. Such a measured perspective is hardly unexpected: a former Bill Clinton speechwriter, Waldman is president of the Brennan Centre for Justice, a non-partisan think-tank dedicated to "improving the systems of democracy and justice". His calm tone and habit of taking the long view offers a refreshing tonic in this most loaded of debates.

Guns represent a microcosm of an America divided between left and right, urban and rural, collective and individual rights. It's complicated further because it is encoded in the Bill of Rights.