Going Over the Second Amendment
Another interpretation of the 2nd Amendment
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.
I have many qualms with our Founding Fathers. Their vagueness in the constitution is one of them. The 2nd amendment has a debate surrounding it’s wording that no other amendment gets in the public discourse.
Average people rarely debate the meaning of the ninth or sixth amendment. Wanna be (and terrible) constitutional scholars armed with nothing more than a Harvard professor want to make definitive arguments about the second amendment that a brief look at history and context does not support.
State Militias
Once upon a time the United States actually operated under Dual Federalism, that is the idea that the States have their own limited sovereignty and that the tyrants in Washington aren’t micromanaging gerontocrats. (Better definition here.) However, this brought up a problem, the Bill of Rights had trouble applying at the state level.
The process of correcting that mistake is referred to as Incorporation. The argument back then was states could have their own bill of rights in their own state constitutions; however, the Civil War and Jim Crow demonstrated how god awful that idea was. The 14th amendment somewhat fixed this with it’s due process clause. The entire process took decades and many court cases for each amendment.
With this context in mind, why would the 2nd amendment only create state militias? It’s both redundant, and wrong to believe that this one specific right did apply to the states when the others didn’t.
Remember, in the second amendment, State is uppercase and singular, which means it’s not talking about the states that make up the United States, but rather the whole governmental State. Let’s pretend for a moment that it does. What is to stop a group of gun owners from banding together, writing up a charter, and calling themselves a Well-Regulated Militia. (Ignoring, of course, the fact that the meaning of Regulated and Regulars has changed since the American Revolution.)
If I’m wrong, explain to me why a government is giving itself the right to create a militia is a series of amendments about personal freedom. The weakness of the US government under the Articles of Confederation was well known to the Founding Fathers, so why would creating a government militia be in a series of Amendments guaranteeing the rights of the American people if the right to bear arms was not itself a right guaranteed to the American people.
The Argument of Time
This argument is by far the silliest and most sinister. This idea is that the second amendment only applies to muskets and other arms available at the time. All the other rights apply to modern day speech, search and seizure, interrogation, and justice, but the second amendment only applies to technology that existed at the time. This sets a dangerous precedent for our rights in general. If this line of thinking can be applied to the second, it can most certainly be applied to the other nine.
I own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended. Had to include this gem. Muskets are much more dangerous than people realize.
There are further grammar arguments that I can include. The first part is a reason; the second part is the right; so on and so forth. However, the second amendment seems pretty clear on what it means.
Hi my name is Michael Vincent Hawthorne and I write for the Midnight Variety Hour. You can check out my page for more pieces on entertainment and politics.