The Second Amendment isn’t just about hunting or self defense.
“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.”
The second amendment to the constitution carries a lot of meaning in a single sentence. There is a whole lot of creative misunderstanding, prevarication, and bullshit surrounding it and most of that can be traced back to the very same sort of people who the amendment was written to protect us from. So lets clear some of that up, shall we…
The first phrase of this amendment is where a lot of people try to find a loophole. “Militia means Military” they might say. Or they might go for the “Well regulated” part. They do this without understanding the meaning of those terms let’s take this in parts.
Militia, contrary to wide belief, does not mean Military. Or perhaps I should say, it does not mean a state sponsored standing army. Nor does it mean a crazy, armed, fringe group that likes to think of itself as an army. In the late 1700’s, “Militia” was a term that encompased the concept of a citizen soldier. A citizen soldier is a person who is prepared to fight, physically if necessary, for his community. Community could mean his house, his neighborhood, his town, what ever. The unit was of greater import than the individual, and the individual was willing to fight for it. If you look at the early actions of the Revolutionary War, a great deal of the fighting was conducted by people exactly like that. They were not organized in any great fashion. At Lexington and Concord, there was a couple of local leaders, a Captain and a Colonel and even a local Doctor that led American troops into the conflict. Captain John Parker was a Captain in the British army many years before Lexington. He no longer held any sort of formal active rank and was willing and able to fight for his community. Dr. Joseph Warren was a Physician who was locally active, was granted a commission to the rank of Major General by the colonies militia and chose to fight as a private at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he was killed. Those are examples of what a Militia man is supposed to be. Someone who is willing to fight for his community, a Citizen Soldier. You can look up Minutemen and other groups for more outstanding examples. The more germaine point is that there is no requirement for you to be a part of any formal organized fighting force.
The second highly misunderstood part of that phrase is “Well Regulated”. Back at the time of the founding, regulated did not mean subject to laws and ordinances and every sort of government control. People today conflate and confuse that with the term “regulation” as used in things like “Environmental regulation” or “business regulations”. Modern usage usually implies that there is a formal law or rule and that violation of that means you can be subjected to some kind of penalty. Back then, it simply meant “under control”. Under whose control? The amendment doesn’t say. I do know that many of the founders had a deep distrust of the idea of a standing army. They also specifically said in another amendment that powers not enumerated in the Constitution fall to the States or the Individual. Logically, since this does not have a specified power enumerated, then it falls to the people (Tenth Amendment). Congress does have the authority to raise an army, but the President, in the wonderful balancing act, has command.
What “Well Regulated” actually meant was trained and prepared and ready to fight. People also get wrapped up around the idea that the idea was to line up in neat rows and shoot at each other. While that was common enough, the French and Indian War was still fresh in everyone’s mind, and the American fighting men were well aware of guerilla tactics. So the fighting men of the American Revolution had to be ready to go from their peaceful pursuits to ready to fight with a minute’s notice (Minute Men), possibly from concealed positions, and frequently out numbered by what was, at the time, the most powerful military in the world. The author of the Bill of Rights knew this very well, and so that was a very large part of the reasoning. You cannot have a fighting force ready, at a moment’s notice, if they are not allowed to keep weaponry close to hand. I would argue that this was the primary reason for that amendment.
A very close second reason has to do with the second phrase, “being necessary to the security of a free state”. Now security against outside threats is kind of a given, whether it was the British, the unfriendly tribes here and there, the Spanish, and so on. But a crucial word gets lost in there. “Free”. Keep in mind they just finished a bloody, nasty war against what was, at the start, their own government, the Crown. They knew darn well that government overreach was a thing, and they knew all about what happened with notable republics like Rome. They knew that could happen again. The best way to prevent that is to have the general populace to be armed if they so wished. Any possible tyrant would not be able to easily just shut down opposition. Given that class distinctions and Nobility were now moot, the idea of a population at large that could feild an effective fighting force pretty quickly damps down the inclination toward the more brutal power grabs.
A corollary to this has to do not with the text specifically, but rather the concepts. Given that the founders wanted the citizens to be ready to fight, possibly another military, they wanted the citizens to be able to field military grade weaponry. At the time, that meant Sabers, Firearms, bayonets, and even Cannon and Ships with Cannon. I’m not talking about huge wallowing cargo vessels with a couple of guns to deter pirates. I’m talking about fast ships with lot’s of cannon that could take out a small town. Keep that in mind when someone complains about a scary black rifle.
That brings me to the next part. “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. There is really not much to discuss here. I assume that it is really important because it very baldly and clearly states things in a way that really isn’t nuanced at all. One could argue that it is one of the most clear and unambiguous statements in the entire Constitution. In a world of nuance and in a document filled with what some people would call flowery language, this one stands out to me. There is really only one interpretation to this. So I ask those on the Left: What part of “Shall not be infringed” do you NOT understand?
There are a great many and varied opinions on this, but I’ll plainly state my own bias here. I’m pretty much an absolutist. If I have the money and I want to buy a Vulcan mini-gun or a Howitzer, I should be able to. I enjoy going to the range. I have my own little arsenal because I have lived in areas where not being armed was likely to get you killed. I do keep my weapons in a safe manner and I am willing and able to use them, within a minute or less, to defend my life, my family, and my neighbors and in that light consider myself to be a humble militia of one. I’d like to think it’s pretty well regulated.
