This (pages 2 and 3) would make an interesting starting point for an alternate history:
As Joyce Malcolm has extensively documented, the English perception of an individual right to arms arose out of a 17th century reversal of policy course. Prior to the Stuart dynasty, English governments actively forced their subjects to own and use arms. All healthy male subjects were required to own arms appropriate to the time and their wealth, towns were required to construct shooting ranges, and all games other than marksmanship were outlawed in order to ensure that Englishmen would have but one legal sport.
Imagine if that were the case in the United States. No football, basketball, or baseball. Just hundreds of games involving shooting.
It would be totally unconstitutional (freedom of association would probably nix the idea) but it could make an interesting story.
Via Dave Hardy.
In my brief foray into the history of law in the Police Academy, we were taught that English Common Law was indeed the basis of much of our Constitutional Law. Some things were changed, however. No religion may be established here, but there is a Church of England. In the USA, we are required to protect our crops from open-range cattle, but in England, cattle may not be raised on the open range, and there is a specific crime involved if your animal eats your neighbor’s garden. There are really lots of differences between English Common Law and our law.
It could have been worse: we could have patterned our legal system on the Napoleonic code, some Founders suggested it. Louisiana sort-of did that.
How could some of our Founders have suggested patterning from the Napoleonic Code? Wasn’t he well after the Constitution was ratified?