The Second Amendment
The most important amendment in the Bill of Rights. Without this amendment none of the others are safe. Without the ability to protect oneself against tyranny and oppression you will be subjugated.
The 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.
This is one of the most hotly contested amendments in the constitution. The people who believe that taking arms away from everyone will make the country safer argue that the Militia is an outdated concept. It if from back in the time when there was no real standing Army.
However, if you look at the Second Amendment historically it was created to keep arms in the hands of people as a response to tyranny and oppression. The original Bill of rights was not ten amendments, it was supposed to be a modification of the Constitution. The text of what was to become the second amendment was not supposed to go into the Constitution in Article 1 Section 8 but in the First Article, Section nine between clauses 3 and 4 along with other individual civil rights asserted by individual as a defense against against government action.
The second amendment was put in as a guarantee to the Anti-Federalists. The Anti-Federalists did not want a strong central government because it has the ability to wield too much power. The original text of the Second Amendment was:
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.
Well, that certainly reads different, it’s very clear why it was put in there. The changes that were made to the Second Amendment were supposed to make it stronger and less subject to interpretation. The definition of a militia was removed so that a future government could not say they could take arms away because of the definition. The religious argument was removed because England try to use a similar clause to remove arms from the people prior to the revolution.
Obviously, from my opening statement I believe that I have the right to be armed, the right to protect myself from the tyranny of the majority. I think that anyone who believes that taking guns away from the law abiding citizens will somehow lower crime is off their rocker. Study after study has shown that if the average citizen is better armed then crime rates fall. If you take the guns away from the law abiding citizens, the only ones with guns will be criminals; it kinda makes sense.
I think that I should be allowed to own assault weapons, shotguns or whatever I perceive as the best defense for my family. Yes, accidents happen; it’s sad when a child gets a hold of a gun and accidentally kills them self or someone else. It’s also sad when a child gets hit by a car or falls down the stairs or gets hurt on a bike or with a lawnmower.
But we are not outlawing cars, stairs or bicycles or lawnmowers are we? Of course not. I would not sacrifice my ability to defend my freedom to save those lives. The number of lives we would lose will be a far larger number.
Some parting quotes from our founding fathers from discussions about the Second Amendment:
Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.
–Noah Webster
In America we may reasonably hope that the people will never cease to regard the right of keeping and bearing arms as the surest pledge of their liberty.
–St. George Tucker
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
–Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Joseph Story