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.
Twenty seven plain and simple words, about which many hundreds of thousands of much more complicated words have been written. I am a plain and simple man. I believe the drafters of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights used these twenty seven plain and simple words so that other plain and simple men like me would understand them, plainly and simply. As a plain and simple man, I believe the Second Amendment gives me the right to own the firearm of my choosing without hindrance or interference of any kind from the government, so long as I am not guilty of crimes against my fellow citizens.
The drafters of our constitution were steeped in the knowledge of 1800 years of recorded history, the many nations and civilizations, their rise, their prosperity, and their demise. In all this history, they took particular interest in discerning the conditions necessary for a free people and a free society to prosper. They distilled their findings, and drafted our Constitution and the Bill of Rights to ensure those conditions would be met.
Some now say our Constitution is out of date and needs to be drastically revised or discarded altogether. The “Progressive” Social Democrats like to refer to the Constitution and Bill of Rights as a “living” document. This simply means they can change it to their liking at will. They would have us believe that this product of 1800 years of history has become obsolete in just a couple of hundred years. Of particular interest to them is the Second Amendment. They continue to attack it today, in the ruse of public safety. History is not good enough for them. It doesn’t fit their agenda.
Many people would say the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, being first, is obviously the most important. The rights guaranteed the individual citizen by the First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the rights to peaceably gather to redress grievances with the government they created, certainly these rights are the most desirous to a free people in a free society. I, however, would argue that the Second Amendment is the most important, simply because those learned gentlemen of 200 years ago wrote the Second Amendment as the supreme means of guaranteeing the First Amendment, and indeed the rest of the Constitution.
The Second Amendment was written with three distinct purposes in mind. One purpose was to guarantee the continued existence of a citizen-soldiery, a militia that could be raised literally out of the landscape at a moments’ notice to repel an attack from outside our borders. Standing armies are expensive, and a fledgling nation with little or no money can ill-afford to support such a luxury. Indeed, what better way to respond to an attack anywhere in a vast region than to have the citizenry on the spot able to rise up and stem the tide, giving others time to gather and rush to support. This meant those individual citizens would have to be armed and able, proficient and ready, at any time.
A second purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure each individual citizen had the means for self defense. When cornered and flight is blocked, even a rabbit will turn and fight for its’ life. Self defense, or the will to live, is a law of nature, and as such, has been recognized as a ‘natural right’ by great civilizations throughout history. Our new nation being primarily an agrarian society, many citizens were spread out over rural areas. Each household had to be able to defend itself from the wild beasts of the forests, as well as the Human beasts that every society carries on its’ fringes. This ‘Natural Right of Self-Defense’ was well recognized and the provision made for it in the form of the Second Amendment.
A third, and, in both past and present times, perhaps the most important of all the purposes of the Second Amendment, was to allow the citizens of our country the means of repelling the enemy from within our borders. Our new country had just fought a war of independence against its’ former rulers, a governorship that had become unresponsive, oppressive, and tyrannical. The Founding Fathers recognized the dangers of a government that becomes too large and too powerful, a self-serving entity that will go to any means to gain more control over the common folk and increase its’ own elitist power and wealth. This governmental monster can only be thrown off by a citizenry capable of, and willing to use, whatever degree of force necessary. An unarmed citizenry is not capable of this. With all its’ power and might, including that of a large standing national army or police force loyal to the government instead of the citizens, this monster will reign.
To those gentlemen of 200 years ago, with the war just fought still fresh in their minds, perhaps this last purpose was really the first purpose they had in mind.
I invite anyone, despite your feelings in the matter, to research and read papers, speech transcripts, newspaper articles, letters, and any other writings you can find from the period surrounding the birth of our nation. Only in this way can you come to a true understanding of the meaning and intent, as well as the importance, of the Second Amendment.
Gregory S. Austin
Proud Right Winger
