On the 2nd Amendment...

I am not a member of the NRA, nor do I even own a gun at the time of this article, but one of the most dear rights to me is immortalized in the 2^nd Amendment:

Amendment II

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.

If I might begin by slaying the “expert arguments” about whether the 2^nd Amendment enumerates a right of individuals, of the militia, or of the state…  Again, from the Amendment:  “…the right of the people… shall not be infringed.”  Those who twist and contort and wrangle over words miss the trees, much less the forest.  It was this individual right that made the “necessary”, “well regulated Militia” feasible.

It’s always hard for me to know if…A) “gun control” types are just so naïve as to think that men in power would NEVER scheme or abuse that power, or…B) that the scoffer is actually more sinister and is actually a part of such a scheme to increase the tyranny.  I’m sure there are some of both persuasions in the gun control crowd… (i.e. those who think an armed citizenry is just silly paranoia and those who actively seek a disarmed citizenry so that a federal/socialized tyranny can be freely imposed upon us).

Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) said:  “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  It might surprise you to know that our Founding Fathers believed a very similar thing, except…  Mao believed that those guns were to be held by the military and, thusly, commanded by his communist government… “Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.” (Mao)

Our Founding Fathers, on the other hand, believed that, for a people to remain free from tyranny, the guns must be held by all able-bodied men in the nation (i.e. we the people).  Thus, the guns our forefathers were protecting through this 2^nd Amendment were not guns meant for hunting, or for sport, or for even for self-defense, per se’.  The very intent behind the 2^nd Amendment was to allow citizens to protect themselves from the tyranny of their own government run amok or from foreign incursions to which the federal military might not be able (or the federal government might not be willing) to respond to in a timely fashion (e.g. illegal immigration).  Having a well-armed citizenry was intended to deter the ill ambitions of politicians or would-be tyrants at home and abroad.

Paranoia?  Someone once said, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you!”  And… If it IS paranoia, then it was a paranoia shared by our Founding Fathers for that was their intent in the 2^nd Amendment as expressed in other contemporaneous documents.

As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers (#46), “Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.”

Madison, our 4^th President and the Founding Father largely responsible for pushing the idea of a division of powers between the states and the federal government, and a further division of powers within the federal government, was saying that…at any given time, our own people should be capable of defeating any standing army that our federal government might send against us.

Despite how some modern interpreters twist our founding documents, the Militia was NOT the National Guard, but rather…the Militia consisted of virtually all men – every able-bodied white male…18-45 years of age (1 U.S. Statute 271).  Indeed, there WASN’T a National Guard back then and, even when the National Guard did come into existence, the law made a clear distinction between the Guard and the militia.  US Code bears out that distinction…

US Code: TITLE 10 > Subtitle A > PART I > CHAPTER 13 > §311. Militia: composition and classes. (emphasis added)

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are —

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

And lest there be any doubt created by those who would edit and contort ¶a to say that the militia was only “all males…and females who are members of the National Guard…” No.  All male citizens are in the militia and…females who are in the Guard are also in the militia.  ¶b2 clearly points to an entirely separate class of the militia who are not in the National Guard, so Guardsmen clearly do not include the whole of the militia…which, in truth, is actually irrelevant to an individual’s 2^nd Amendment right. (…which you probably knew, but idiots have to be shown…and even then…)

I will caution 2^nd Amendment supporters, however, to be careful about the quotes they read on-line.  There are a number of sites with quotes that are apparently false.  Their use is unnecessary, even detrimental, to the cause.  That is why I have used only the most irrefutable quotes I could find on verifiable university or government sites.  These, I believe, are more than ample to shut the mouths of the ignorant and the subversive.