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.
In all its glorious obfuscation, that is the 2nd Amendment. Twenty-seven words start to finish, but it’s a real gem of an amendment. For one thing it doesn’t really make sense, which is perfect for people who want to tell you what it means.
England, in the 17th century had problems. It was expensive to be an empire, the island colonies in the West Indies needed constant protection from The Netherlands, Spain, and France. You had to have troops, and they needed ships to take them there, and none of that was cheap. Plus, the Cavaliers and Roundheads were battling in a terrible civil war to decide the system of governance of the island nation. There just wasn’t enough men or money to secure the American colony. Take care of yourself, was the instructions they provided the colonists.
Militias were formed, they were expected to meet and practice once a month under the supervision of an English veteran, who was hired for the purpose. England provided most of the weaponry, as well.
Eventually, the militias rose and cast off the yoke of empire.
America was still a nascent, relatively poor country. They had muskets, provided by England, and later France, but to keep a standing army in an agricultural society was untenable. Someone had to grow the food, after all. And there wasn’t enough money to pay and equip a standing army.
Enter, stage left, the well regulated militia. Keeping the country safe from enemies, foreign and domestic. Foreign invasion was still an ongoing, lethal consideration. The French had troops in what is now Canada, and the Spanish had a large presence in South America. Plus, there were the original Americans, who weren’t all that keen on giving up huge portions of territory to the interlopers.
When George Washington was inaugurated the Continental Army numbered 595 men. The well regulated militia, now organized as a national militia, instead of separate bodies controlled at the state level, made up the bulk of the armed forces.
Time and technology have changed everything. The militia is a thing of the past, like the sailing ships that sealed off the British at Yorktown. It has been replaced by an enormous, expensive, well trained and heavily equipped standing army.
Of course, the founding fathers had no way of knowing this would happen. They wrote the constitution and the amendments in a world of smooth bore muskets, a world where horse travel was still the quickest way to get anywhere.
Essentially, the whole 2nd amendment revolves around the first part of the sentence, the well regulated militia being necessary. Once that was no longer true, the rest became irrelevant.
It is difficult to believe the framers of the constitution were envisioning a world where people carried guns into Applebee’s in the name of protecting our freedoms.
There are times I see people walking through the grocery store with a pistol holstered at their side and wonder what they find so threatening. What scenario plays out in their grocery shopping plan that requires a loaded pistol? Most times I worry much more about the “good guys with a gun” than whatever drove them to the state of fear that forced them to spend the money to arm themselves.
Where, in the twenty-seven words of the 2nd amendment does it say carry a gun everywhere? How does a pistol at Piggly Wiggly provide the security necessary for a free state?
I wish the authors of the constitution would have been more explicit, “we need an organized body of armed men to keep us safe from attack, we don’t need everybody to buy and carry all the guns they can. Nobody needs that.” I’m sure somebody would find a loophole there, though. Commonsense gun laws are a pipedream, but the alternative is turning into a nightmare.
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