Deborah Pearlstein asks what evidence we have that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right of the same kind as other fundamental rights, such as the other rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights. I can offer no better evidence than the speech offered by Senator Jacob Howard, a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, and the floor manager of the Fourteenth Amendment. He was given the task of introducing the amendment before the United States Senate and explaining its purposes.
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