Meaning of Second Amendment's Term "Free State"

Hugh Damright

New member
I've been reading about how Parker's lawyer Bob Levy, and Eugene Volokh, are construing the Second Amendment's term "free State" to regard the whole US as being a free State. Volokh has an article on the subject at http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/freestate.pdf . I sent him this response:

"I would like to comment re: your article which asserts that the Second Amendment's term "free state", in the sense of it meaning a "free country", could theoretically refer to a state as well as to the US. I do not believe that the US qualifies as a "free state".

It is my understanding that a free government is a complete/perfect government. The article mentioned that in 1776 Pennsylvania declared that their House would have all the powers necessary for the legislature of a free state, but did not contrast the US as being limited to enumerated powers. It seems to me that the US does not have all the powers necessary for the legislature of a free state, and so the US cannot possibly be a free state.

The article contained a quote about democracy being a popular or free state, but seemed to miss the point that a free government is a popular government. A free state is not only contrasted with despotism, it is contrasted with other forms of government, especially with monarchy (as for example Webster's 1828 definition of monarchy saying that "a free government has a great advantage over a simple monarchy"). It is my assertion that a free state can also be contrasted with the Union, because the US is at its foundation a federal government, and a federal government is not a popular government.

I think that another distinction between a free state and the US is that the people of a free state have a right to rise up as one and alter/abolish their government, but Federalist #39 explains that the people of the US have no such right.

Of course the term "free state" doesn't mean only/specifically "free from foreign rule" or "a state in the union independent of federal government", but if a state is under foreign or federal rule, then it is not under popular rule, so I do not see how it could be called a "free state".

I believe that it is one of our fundamental founding principles that the US is too big to be a free state. Antifederalist VI says that "a simple free government could not be exercised over this whole continent". George Mason, at the Virginia Ratification Convention, said that "the territory lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi ... is larger than any territory that ever was under any one free government. It is too extensive to be governed but by a despotic monarchy". Madison expressed this same sentiment, in his his Report on the Virginia Resolutions, "that the obvious tendency, and inevitable result, of a consolidation of the states into one sovereignty, would be to transform the republican system of the United States into a monarchy". The idea that the US is one big free state seems completely inconsistent with our founding."
 
Back
Top