Malcolm's book "To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right" was published by Harvard University Press in 1994. The volume presents the full background and implications of the arms provision in the English Bill of Rights; this provision was the forerunner of the Second Amendment. Professor Malcolm is clearly aware that the topic has some bearing on an emerging debate concerning the Second Amendment, but she does not overemphasize the implications of her findings for constitutional construction in the contemporary United States. Malcolm offers considerable information to suggest that, at least in relation to citizen access to firearms, the founders were operating in what was still a living legal tradition. She offers a number of contemporary sources indicating that the actual language of the Second Amendment presumed that the militia would be composed of nearly all adult, white males and equally presumed that citizens would have private arms for their own purposes. It is useful to recall the origins of the Second Amendment before the debate about gun control becomes entirely absorbed in speculations of what is required, in ideological terms, by a supposed republican tradition of the founding of the United States. Footnotes