Second Amendment To The United States Constitution - Drafting and Adoption of The Constitution

Drafting and Adoption of The Constitution

Further information: Constitutional Convention

	James Madison (left) is known as the "Father of the Constitution" and "Father of the Bill of Rights" while George Mason (right) with Madison is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights"
	Patrick Henry (left) believed that a citizenry trained in arms was the only sure guarantor of liberty while Alexander Hamilton (right) wrote in Federalist No. 29 that "little more can be reasonably aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed..."

Struggling under the inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, delegates from Virginia and Maryland assembled at the Mount Vernon Conference in March 1785 to fashion a remedy. The following year, at a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, 12 delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) met and drew up a list of problems with the current government model. At its conclusion, the delegates scheduled a follow-up meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for May 1787 to present solutions to these problems, such as the absence of:

• interstate arbitration processes to handle quarrels between states;
• sufficiently trained and armed intrastate security forces to suppress insurrection;
• a national militia to repel foreign invaders.

It quickly became apparent that the solution to all three of these problems required shifting control of the states' militias to the federal congress and giving that congress the power to raise a standing army. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution codified these changes by allowing the Congress to do the following:

• provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;
• raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
• provide and maintain a navy;
• make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
• provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
• provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

Some representatives mistrusted proposals to enlarge federal powers, because they were concerned about the inherent risks of centralizing power. Federalists, including James Madison, initially argued that a bill of rights was unnecessary, sufficiently confident that the federal government could never raise a standing army powerful enough to overcome a militia. Federalist Noah Webster argued that an armed populace would have no trouble resisting the potential threat to liberty of a standing army. Anti-federalists, however, advocated amending the Constitution with clearly defined and enumerated rights providing more explicit constraints on the new government. Many Anti-federalists feared the new federal government would choose to disarm state militias. Federalists countered that in listing only certain rights, unlisted rights might lose protection. The Federalists realized there was insufficient support to ratify the Constitution without a bill of rights and so they promised to support amending the Constitution to add a bill of rights following the Constitution's adoption. This compromise persuaded enough Anti-federalists to vote for the Constitution, allowing for ratification. The Constitution was declared ratified June 21, 1788, when nine of the original thirteen states had ratified it. The remaining four states later followed suit, although the last two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island, ratified only after Congress had passed the Bill of Rights and sent it to the states for ratification. James Madison drafted what ultimately became the Bill of Rights, which was proposed by the first Congress on June 8, 1789, and was adopted on December 15, 1791.