Second 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."

These 27 words stir up controversy almost every day. Two camps argue over "rights" of one camp to own and use arms --- handguns in particular. The other camp wants all handguns confiscated. Police/military excluded, of course. Elected leaders are divided, and the Supreme Court is ambivilent. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I want to lay out my (not-so-legal) arguments, for the record. Call this an amicus curiae submission, or a common sense outline. And I must clarify the two camps, I call those who wish guns gone, a politically correct reformist, i.e., liberal. The others, gun owners, favoring individual liberty, will be called survivalists.

Lets remember our founders had single shot muskets and pistols. Technology vastly expanded on the word "arms." "The people" is another matter. We, you and I, are "the people" as are those who want to see handguns eliminated.

What is a "militia?" The sentiment at the time disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of the country could be secured through the Militia -- civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion. The term 'Militia' appears from the debates in the Constitution Convention, and legislation of the Colonies. These show the Militia was comprised of males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense, i.e., "A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline." And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. This last line being overlooked by 'liberals.'
If the Second Amendment guaranteed only the right of States to maintain militias, the Supreme Court could easily have disposed of Second Amendment claims in United States v. Miller by holding that individual citizens do not have standing to assert such a claim. Instead, the Court treated the right to keep and bear arms as a right of individuals, regardless of their affiliation with any organized militia.

The Supreme Court views "the people" referred to in the Bill of Rights as meaning individuals, i.e., ordinary citizens. The term appears in Articles I, II, IV, IX, and X. Undoubtedly, this will come up before the Court (again) in the not too distant future. The way the court is aligned now, it will be a toss-up if the Second will be tortured into relieving "the people" of their arms. Since citizenship does not automatically entail service in an organized state militia, the Supreme Court's opinion in Scott v. Sanford also listed the right to keep and bear arms with other rights that the Court has held to be of an individual nature, such as freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, peaceable assembly, trial by jury, and the right against self-incrimination. 60 U.S. at 450.

"Gun control" as envisioned by reformist groups such as Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) is a means to an end -- gun prohibition. Gun-prohibitionists, being elitists, deem themselves to know what is best for the rest of us. They camouflage their true agenda to lower resistance from the citizenry. However, when writing in newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, gun-prohibitionists are often very candid about their ultimate goal. In an op-ed piece entitled "Disarm The Citizenry", The Washington Post, Friday, April 5, 1996, page A19, columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote: "Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed by sister democracies such as Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today. Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is purely symbolic ... Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation."
Forewarned is forearmed. (No pun intended).

It is also significant that the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recognized that "the Second Amendment embodies the right to defend oneself and one's home against physical attack" since this is a right exercised by individuals as opposed to States.


"Disarm", "restrict", "confiscate", "prohibitive tax", "banning", is language used by people who don't want other people to bear arms, period.

I rest my case.