The English Bill of Rights of 1689 declared certain "true, ancient and indubitable rights," including: "That the subjects which are Protestants, may have Arms for their Defense suitable to their Condition, and are allowed by Law." Putting the colonies under martial law and attempting to disarm them, were among the main grievances that led to the Revolutionary war.
Yeah, that was somewhat dubiously/questionably used as agit-prop, but as a matter of historical fact, it
absolutely never granted an unfettered right to bear arms. The key words are "and are allowed by Law". Don't take my word for it:
BASC's Bill Harriman dispels the belief that the Bill of Rights 1689 offers a safeguard for the private ownership of firearms in the UK.
basc.org.uk
I can provide other sources if necessary, but I don't want to derail too hard into a legal/historical discussion which is quite complex.
To be extra clear, the only people the law
definitely gives the right to bear arms, were at the time,
around 3% of the British population. It wasn't intended to apply, nor applied, to "all British protestants", but rather strictly the upper class, who were already armed. It's also intended to forbid Catholics from being armed to prevent any rollback on the "Glorious Revolution" (I use the term advisedly, m'lud).
However, once that had become propaganda used by the elites behind the American revolutionary war, then it contributed to the notions that lead to making an unfettered universal right real with the 2nd amendment. Hence something something novel appeared. The novelty of the US law is, why, by the way there is so much analysis of it's historical and philosophical roots (it had far more of the latter than the former, as it turns out).
There's no reason a fantasy setting shouldn't have such a law though. I suspect many do.
Whether to subsequent constitutional protections in the American consitution broke a pattern, I don't know.
I mean, it absolutely did. It was novel.
Aristotle and Circero both wrote of the need for free citizens to be armed, not only for self-defense but as a protection against tyranny. To what extent those rights were ever codified in Greek city states or the Roman Republic, I don't know.
They weren't codified at all. Both were talking about what they'd
like to see, not fact.
Rome's laws on this varied widely across a huge amount of time, but there is never a general right for even male Roman citizens to bear arms, let alone other members of their society. Bringing weapons into Rome itself was strictly forbidden.
As for Cicero, literally the first thing he said was that the law he referring to was "
not written down anywhere but in our hearts" (or something close to that). That might have given you a clue as to if it was codified, no? Cicero was poetically imagining a right he wanted to have, not a real one he did have. Male Roman citizens could however
own weapons (most of the time!), and if you were traveling between cities, it was de facto acceptable to be armed, however, you had no
right, so if you pissed off the wrong person, they could certainly be taken away with no recourse (especially for non-elites).
There's also a whole lot of stuff about daggers and whether they were "weapons" but basically not really to Roman thinking.
Aristotle was talking philosophy, not fact. Only selected elites could be significantly armed in ancient Athens. When he complains about people being "disarmed" he's talking about daggers and the like, not D&D-character weaponry. Athens has some fantastically bizarre laws that are actually very rarely discussed because of how heavily clash with the notion of "the birthplace of democracy".
