"Klan terrorism in Tennessee`s 1868 elections was the subject of a speech on February 14, 1871, by Representative Horace Maynard, who cited accounts of firearms seizures and intimidation of black voters. Klansmen threatened and seized firearms from black Republicans. One black man testified that Klansmen came `to my house, inquiring for guns and pistols.` Klansmen threatened a black who admitted that he would vote for Grant, and ransacked his house after he refused to surrender his pistols. Blacks frequently defended themselves with their pistols.

"Meanwhile, Representative Butler introduced H.R. No. 3011, a bill to protect the loyal and peaceable citizens of the United States in the full enjoyment of their rights, persons, liberties, and property, and it was referred to the Committee on Reconstruction. On February 20, on behalf of the committee, Butler submitted a report to the House on the bill. The bill, which would become the basis of the Civil Rights Act passed in the next session, was then recommitted to the committee. Nothing instances of terrorism against the freedman, the report that accompanied the bill warned:

" `The negro may be pressed too far, and be compelled to take up arms in his own defense. These men who oppress him in the manner before mentioned seem to dread this, for in many counties they have preceded their outrages upon him by disarming him, in violation of his right as a citizen to "keep and bear arms," which the Constitution expressly says shall never be infringed.` "

From Halbrook, Securing Civil Rights: Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, pgs. 105-106.
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#civilrightsact #freedmen #securingcivilrights #armedcitizens #2arights ...

[ENGLISH BELOW] "A lei de Weimar permitia que a polícia negasse a posse de armas de fogo a qualquer pessoa `indigna de confiança`. Nesse momento, a Gestapo estava especificamente preocupada com o confisco de armas de fogo. Recentemente, em 27 de novembro de 1935, o Dr. Best havia escrito ao Chefe de Polícia de Berlim e aos funcionários do governo e da polícia, tratando da utilização de armas confiscadas sob custódia da polícia: pistolas semiautomáticas (porém, não revólveres) deveriam ser enviadas às sedes da Gestapo em Berlim. A polícia e unidades governamentais poderiam requerer outras armas confiscadas, e as que não fossem necessárias deveriam ser destruídas.

"Este esclarecimento veio do mesmo Werner Best, o qual, como descrevemos no capítulo 3, havia escrito os documentos de Boxheimer em 1931, defendendo uma tomada de poder pelos nazistas, que declarariam que todas as armas de fogo
deveriam ser entregues dentro de 24 horas, sob pena de morte. Agora um alto oficial da Gestapo... ele comandaria a repressão da Gestapo na França e na Dinamarca durante a guerra, onde a falha em entregar armas de fogo era motivo de execução."

De Halbrook, Hitler e o Desarmamento, pág. 150-151.
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"The Weimar law allowed police to deny firearm ownership to any `unreliable` person. At this time, the Gestapo were keenly concerned with firearms confiscations. Dr. Best had recently written on November 27, 1935, to the Berlin police president and to government and police officials concerning the utilization of confiscated weapons in police custody: self loading pistols (but not revolvers) must be sent to the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Governmental units and police could requisition other confiscated arms, and those not needed must be destroyed.

"This clarification came from the same Werner Best who...had authored the Boxheimer documents in 1931 advocating a Nazi seizure of power that would declare that all firearms must be surrendered within twenty-four hours under penalty of death. Now a top Gestapo official...he would head Gestapo repression in France and then Denmark during the war, where failure to surrender firearms was cause for execution."

From [continued in comments] ...

"Jonathan Goldstein, Adjunct Professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School, has published a comprehensive analysis of the power of Congress to `grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water,` U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 11. Historically, this meant that private citizens could possess cannon and ships and could wage war at sea on enemies approved by Congress.

"`You couldn`t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,` President Joe Biden quipped in 2022. Well, actually you could, and you still can. Cannon were never restricted until included in the revision of the National Firearms Act in 1968, which taxes and requires registration of `destructive devices,` defined as weapons that expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel of which has a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, excluding sporting arms.
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"For fresh insights into the obscure Marque and Reprisal Clause, see Prof. Goldstein`s new article `The Militia of the Sea: The Marque and Reprisal Clause as Textual Proof of Private Heavy-Arms Ownership at the Founding.` [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7195398]
Here`s the Abstract:

"Courts and litigants increasingly say the Second Amendment reaches only the weapons one person can carry. The Constitution refutes that twice, in a single Article...."
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"With textual support from a documented record of roughly 1,700 Revolutionary-era privateering commissions — granted per voyage, in the years before the Constitution was ratified — this Article refutes the modern categorical claim that heavy arms were never `arms.`"

The above excerpts are from my Second Amendment Roundup blog post, "The Militia of the Sea" (8/12/26).

Read the post at reason.com/volokh or copy and paste: https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/12/second-amendment-roundup-the-militia-of-the-sea/

Link can also be accessed through the home page of my website, stephenhalbrook.com
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#marqueandreprisal #NFAact #cannons #destructivedevices #secondamendmentroundup ...

"Annie Oakley thought women should learn to protect themselves, and a gun was the best way to do it. `I have had an ideal for my sex,` she said. `I have wanted them to be able to protect their homes.` She encouraged women to keep a revolver in a drawer by their bed and to carry a pistol when they were out alone, just as she did. Annie hid it in the folds of an umbrella, which she carried when she was out at night anywhere she feared the slightest danger....

"`If I were accosted, I could easily fire,` Annie said. `A woman cannot always rely on getting help just by calling for it.`"

From Shirl Kasper, Annie Oakley (1992), p. 215.

Annie Oakley was born on this date in 1860.

Photo: Annie Oakley cabinet card, 1887.
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#annieoakley #littlemisssureshot #exhibitionshooter #bornonthisday #womenoftheamericanwest ...

"The armed citizen was the last hope of the republic, according to Cicero`s last orations in the senate, the Philippics, a series of orations directed against Marcus Antonius. According to Cicero, Antonius `is an enemy against whom arms have rightly been taken up.` In response to Antonious`s threat to enter Rome with his army, an illegal act, Cicero queried: `What did this mean but a threat to the Roman people of slavery?` Anotonius `should be compelled by arms.` Arguing against Calenus, Cicero asked: `do you call slavery peace? Our ancestors indeed took up arms not only to win freedom, but also empire; you think our arms should be thrown away to make us slaves. What juster reason is there for the waging of war than to repel slavery?` Again, it `is for the liberty of the Roman people...they see they must struggle in arms.`"

From Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, pgs. 18-19.

Image: "Cicero Before the Senate" by Hans Werner Schmidt (1912)
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#cicero #2ahistory #keepandbeararms #thateverymanbearmed #armedcitizen ...

"In a decision issued on August 5, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix (N.D. Tex.) ruled in Silencer Shop Foundation v. Bureau of ATF that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which repealed the taxes for the making and transferring of certain firearms under the National Firearms Act (NFA), left the law without any basis for its registration requirements in the authority of Congress to `lay and collect Taxes.` U.S. Const. art. I, § 8. cl. 1. The firearms affected are short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and `any other weapon[s],` all defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845. Machineguns and destructive devices remain subject to the $200 tax.

"This result is a no-brainer, as Congress enacted the NFA as a tax measure under the Internal Revenue Code and the Supreme Court upheld it as such in Sonzinsky v. United States (1937), which the Court reaffirmed in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), the Obama-care case. Citing this author`s article on the subject, the district court wrote that `the NFA was Congress`s attempt to regulate so-called `gangster weapons` linked to Prohibition Era violence.` The purpose of the NFA requirement that the `firearms` under the Act be registered was to keep track of who paid the tax. Repeal of the tax pulled the rug out from under the registration requirement.
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"With that, the court issued a permanent injunction as the final judgment enjoining the Department of Justice and ATF from `from enforcing the challenged NFA provisions as to untaxed firearms against the plaintiffs and, where applicable, the plaintiffs` agencies, political subdivisions, members, and customers—both current and future.` The plaintiffs include individuals, nonprofit associations, businesses that deal in NFA firearms, together with Texas and thirteen other states...."
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"The court stayed the injunction order for seven days to give the government an opportunity to appeal to the Fifth Circuit, which seems sure to issue its own stay pending appeal. The challenges could easily end up in the Supreme Court...."

The above excerpts are from my Second Amendment Roundup blog post, "$0 Tax Left NFA with No Constitutional Basis" (8/9/26).

[blogpost links in comments] ...

The Swiss did not hold back their anti-Nazi feelings during WWII. This came out in many ways including cabaret satire. "A performance in May 1942 drove the Nazis to distraction. Two actors are standing in front of the curtain. One of them is selling the Nazi newspaper, Signal. The other, a passerby, notices that a picture is printed on the paper. He shouts `Is that him?` meaning Adolf Hitler. `Yes, that is him`--`I want to cut out this picture and frame it!`--`What, do you want to hang it on the wall at home?`--`I do not know yet--either I will hang it or put it on the wall [for execution].` The audience roared, but in most of Europe at that time jokes about killing Hitler would have gotten the humorist hung or put up against the wall to be shot."

German Ambassador Freiherr von Bibra discussed the slanders with the German Consul General Voigt. Von Bibra stated: "I have heard there is an unbelievably filthy hole in Zurich at the Cornichon. People there are insulting the Führer in the most impudent and impertinent manner.... It is clear that this kind of speech is directed against Adolf Hitler. That is what they allow themselves in a so-called neutral country!"

From Halbrook, The Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich, p. 44.
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#zurichhistory #nazisatire #theswissandthenazis #swisscabaret #antinazi ...

"This lever-action, repeating flintlock rifle, known as the Cookson repeater, would fire fourteen shots. The mechanism, invented by Italian gunsmith Michele Lorenzoni around 1680, would be copied by European gun makers for the next century. This gun was owned by John Shaw of Boston in the mid-eighteenth century."

From Halbrook, America`s Rifle: The Case for the AR-15, p. 91 (photo and caption).
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#leveraction #flintlockrifle #cooksonrepeater #NationalFirearmsMuseum #AmericasRifleTheCaseForTheAR15 ...