Amendment on July 28. On August 17, that version was read into the Journal: In late August 1789, the House debated and modified the Second Amendment. These debates revolved primarily around the risk of "mal-administration of the government" using the "religiously scrupulous" clause to destroy the militia as British forces had attempted to destroy the Patriot militia at the commencement of the American Revolution. These concerns were addressed by modifying the final clause, and on August 24, the House sent the following version to the Senate: The next day, August 25, the Senate received the amendment from the House and entered it into the Senate Journal. However, the Senate scribe added a comma before "shall not be infringed" and changed the semicolon separating that phrase from the religious exemption portion to a comma: By this time, the proposed right to keep and bear arms was in a separate amendment, instead of being in a single amendment together with other proposed rights such as the due process right. As a representative explained, this change allowed each amendment to "be passed upon distinctly by the States". On September 4, the Senate voted to change the language of the Second Amendment by removing the definition of militia, and striking the conscientious objector clause: The Senate returned to this amendment for a final time on September 9. A proposal to insert the words "for the common defence" next to the words "bear arms" was defeated. A motion passed to replace the words "the best", and insert in lieu thereof "necessary to the" . The Senate then slightly modified the language to read as the fourth article and voted to return the Bill of Rights to the House. The final version by the Senate was amended to read as: The House voted on September 21, 1789, to accept the changes made by the Senate. The enrolled original Joint Resolution passed by Congress on September 25, 1789, on permanent display in the Rotunda, reads as: On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) was adopted, having been ratified by three-fourths of the states, having been ratified as a group by all the fourteen states then in existence except Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Georgiawhich added ratifications in 1939. Militia following ratification During the first two decades following the ratification of the Second Amendment, public opposition to standing armies, among Anti-Federalists and