The bedrock of the Second Amendment is found in the Glorious Revolution that occurred in 1688 on the British Isles. The Revolution began when influential Protestants thought King James II was attempting to suppress and potentially destroy the Protestant religion because of his stanch Catholic loyalty. As part of this extirpation, Protestants were said to be “disarmed” of their firearms. This fear led to an insurrection and the collapse of King James’s regime as well as his exile. Afterwards, William III and Mary II, James’s daughter, took over the Monarchy, and created the English Bill of Rights of 1689 that restored “ancient rights”, one of them being “the right” to have arms. As the American Colonies grew larger, beginning with the establishment of a permanent colony in Jamestown Virginia in 1607, settlers required arms for hunting and protection, and were afforded the right to own firearms because of ancient rights, followed by the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which extended to the colonies. When it came time for the American Colonies to separate themselves from the British, the colonists were heavily armed. The only way for the Redcoats to gain an advantage over the weaponized militias that existed in the Colonies was to seize hundreds of barrels of gunpowder in storage locations around the burgeoning America. Early on, the British had success, but the colonists considered this seizure as an act of war, and the Revolutionary War began.

Therefore, when the 13 original states unified to form the United States, the delegates called upon the lessons they learned from the War and British control, and required in their Constitution that ancient rights could not be taken from individual citizens by a central government. They also made it known that armed militias were necessary in order to maintain those individual rights if the Federal Government became tyrannous against them, as they felt the British Monarchy had become before the War.