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 Myths and Misquotes: Tench Coxe
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Coxe, Tench
    "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."
      A Pennsylvanian (Tench Coxe), Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia Fed. Gazette, June 18, 1789

The quote is accurate. The myth is in the claim, originated by Don Kates that Madison commended Coxe's "explanatory strictures" (Don B. Kates, Jr., Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204, 224 n.81 [1983]) and then extended by Glenn Harlan Reynolds that "James Madison approved of Coxe's construction of the Second Amendment." (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, A Critical Guide to the Second Amendment, 62 Tenn L. Rev 461, 498 n.29[1995])

First the date of Coxe's essay (June 18) is ten days after Madison first offered his amendments to the House of Representatives and,as such, addresses Coxe's interpreation of the form in which Madison first offered the amendment, not the amendment as finally approved.

Second, Madison's response (on June 28 -- still well before the House took up the amendments) was:

    It is much to wished that the discon[ten]ted part of our fellow Citizens could be reconciled to the Government they have opposed, and by means as little as possible unacceptable to those who approve of the Constitution in its present form. The amendments proposed in the H. of Reps had this twofold object in view; besides the thris one of avoiding all controvertible points which might endanger the assent of 2/3 of each branch of Congs and 3/4 of the State Legislatures. How far the experiment may succeed in any of these aspects is wholly uncertain. It will however be greatly favored explanatory strictures of a healing tendency, and is therefore already indepted to the co-operation of your pen.
      -- Letter from James Madison to Tench Coxe (June 24, 1789) in The Papers of James Madison, Charles F. Hobson et al, eds, 1979, pg 257., as published in Jack Rakove, The Highest Stage of Originalism, 76 Chi-Kent L. Rev 103, 123 n48 (2000)

In other words, Madison is thanking Coxe for promoting the amendments, not approving of his interpretation.

Gary Wills (in A Necessary Evil, Simon & Shuster, NY, 1999, pg 215) notes that the idea the idea that Madison's comment signified an apporoval of Coxe's interpretation would be even odder in light of Coxe's statement, in the paragraph preceding the one cited here that Madison's anti-establishment clause restrainined only "impious" and "self-righteous" religions.

As Rakove further notes in n48, it would be odd for even Coxe to have the interpretation of the 2nd amendment given by the Gun lobby, as Coxe had written a number of essays during the Constitutional ratification process assuring Pennsylvanians of the reserved legislative powers of the states, including the police powers associated with public health and welfare. Rakove doesn't note (but others do) that it was Pennsylvania which had passed the Test Acts, demanding a loyalty oath of its citizens before they could own firearms.
 
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©Copyright, 2000, Mike Rosenberg
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