Second Amendment
Published by Ninth Stage September 6th, 2007 in Gun Control, Second Amendment.As for the canard that the 2nd Amendment is easy to understand, read all the historians on the subject, not just the ones who agree with you. There is no concensus. Parse the sentence, and it makes no sense grammatically–or rather it can be read two ways.
(From comment #66 here.)
I doubt it. Unless you believe that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” means that the militia is guaranteed access to arms - AND that “A well regulated people, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the Militia to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” means that the free people of the United States are guaranteed access to arms.
Oh, you also have to believe that “Militia” means The National Guard, established in 1903 - 112 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified.
So very few of the anti-gunners who claim to know what those words mean aren’t very well versed in American History. Very few have read the 85 articles of the Federalist Papers that make VERY CLEAR what the authors of the Bill of Rights intended.
One must consider the tongue of the day. The English language has evolved. I’ve often commented that the Amendment can be better understood if it is preceded by the word “Because” and the word “being” is substituted with the word “is”. It would then read:
Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
This would be in keeping with the countless other statements, and writings by the same authors who clearly distrusted the concept of a standing army, seeing them as the long arm of the King, and a tool of oppression. Though they had to concede that, to safeguard a free State, a full time army is necessary, they also had to ensure that the Army would always be under strict subjugation to the people. It was necessary to provide the people with a means to protect themselves from what they saw as a very real threat, that the Army would one day become an oppressive force of tyranny.
It was never a question in the mindset of the day that the people needed to have an articulated right to keep and bear arms under normal peace time situations. Every home had a musket. It was not questioned that a man had the right to protect himself, his family or his property from one who wished to do him harm. The fear was that a standing Army would one day rise the level of a tyrannical force and therefore decree that no private citizen could own a weapon. This law protected them from any such decree.