Ninth Stage

Very interesting analysis from Eugene Volokh of the meaning of “free State” in the Second Amendment.  I don’t think I’ve read anything on it before.

“State” simply meant country; and “free” almost always meant free from despotism, rather than from some other country, and never from some larger entity in a federal structure. That is how the phrase was used in the sources that the Framers read. And there is no reason to think that the Framers departed from this well-established meaning, and used the phrase to mean something different from what it meant to Blackstone, Montesquieu, the Continental Congress, Madison, Adams, or others.