Reply To: Shay's Rebellion and the Second Amendment

#20988
gutzmank
Participant

Shays’ Rebellion is described in both the constitutional history and the American history survey course. However, this assertion–of which I had never heard until now–isn’t mentioned. There’s simply no evidence for it in, for example, the writings of James Madison (subject of my last book), and abundant evidence that the concern was that all men be armed so that they could offset a potential tyrannous Federal Government.

Your interlocutor perhaps isn’t aware that in the western counties of Massachusetts, essentially the whole communities–including county militia colonels–participated in the Rebellion.