{"id":118890,"date":"2026-09-21T09:21:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T14:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=118890"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:33:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T14:33:31","slug":"118890","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=118890","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

1791 Does Not Give You a Menu<\/a><\/p>\n

The Founders did not say a State may pick a manner of carry and extinguish the other. Concealment-as-such is not a 1791 category. When the early republic later regulated manner \u2014 starting in 1813 \u2014 it regulated secrecy and left open carry standing. Chandler<\/em> and Nunn<\/em> are that analogue, not a State menu.<\/p>\n

Madison\u2019s text is \u201ckeep and bear.\u201d St. George Tucker, writing the first major American Blackstone in 1803, treats the Amendment as the \u201ctrue palladium of liberty,\u201d self-defense as \u201cthe first law of nature,\u201d and stresses that unlike England the American right has no<\/strong> \u201ccondition or degree\u201d qualifier. (Tucker, Blackstone\u2019s Commentaries<\/em>, 1803, app. 300.) He is attacking disarmament-by-pretext (game laws), not drafting a concealed-vs-open codebook. He never says the legislature may elect one mode and abolish the other.<\/p>\n

If you want a Founding-era practice rule, it is this: peaceable public carry was not a crime in the early republic, and concealed-weapons statutes almost do not exist until 1813 onward<\/strong>. Kopel\u2019s count is eight states before 1846, mostly Southern plus Indiana. That inventory is Clayton E. Cramer, Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic<\/em> (1999). That timing matters. A wave of dirk \/ Bowie \/ \u201csecret assassination\u201d statutes a generation after ratification is not the 1791 settlement.<\/p>\n

What the 1840s\u201350s Courts Actually Held \u2014 and What They Did Not<\/h2>\n

This is the layer the cases actually use.<\/p>\n