The 2nd Amendment guarantees the “right to bear arms,” right? It’s right there in the Constitution between the 1st Amendment, which gives people the right to annoy you, and the 3rd Amendment, which is probably very important. (I looked it up. It says soldiers can’t crash on your couch without an act of congress.)
To paraphrase Inigo Montoya of “The Princess Bride,” we keep using that phrase “the right to bear arms,” but I do not think it means what we think it means. As we have a national conversation about guns, it might be nice to make sure we’re all reading the same 2nd Amendment.
The first thing you notice when you read the 2nd Amendment is that it’s a grammatical mess of bad syntax and vague meaning. Read it for yourself:
“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 learned to write a better sentence than that in the 7th grade. First, “well-regulated” lacks a hyphen, and the dependent introductory clause dangles there uselessly, kinda-sorta requiring militias to ensure security but confusing the basic thrust of the sentence. If you squint and tilt your head, you can infer that the 2nd Amendment states that the federal government is not allowed to limit your right to own or carry a gun. Because freedom, or something.
It’s a badly written sentence. The only thing the 2nd Amendment clarifies is that the worst writing is done by committee. If that were the extent of it, we could rest easy, knowing that congress intended that they should never mess with my right to keep and bear arms, till death do us part. But here’s the thing that makes me think the Founding Fathers might have needed adult supervision: The 2nd Amendment that’s in the Constitution isn’t the version congress voted on. Someone changed it before it went to the states. Doesn’t that just make you want to turn the Bill of Rights over and find the treasure map on the other side?
Here’s the text of the 2nd Amendment that congress actually voted on:
“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 one’s even worse. What’s the subject of the sentence, “militia” or “right”? Doesn’t this read as if they were dying to get out of town, shouting out phrases, and assuming that the guy writing it down would clean it up? But one wig-wearing slave-owner’s self-evident truth is a 21st Century American’s confused mess. Do we have an absolute right to a well-regulated militia or to keep and bear arms?
Lost in the gun debate—and in the impenetrable mess of the dueling versions of the 2nd Amendment—is that the Founding Fathers thought there was a point to having a gun: “the security of a free state.” As long as we’re projecting our 21st-Century views onto the bad syntax of harried 18th Century revolutionaries, I read that as Americans can take up arms to defend their country, not against their country.
Somehow, the most hysterical voices against gun safety equate our duly elected leaders with tyranny. Because Barack Obama thinks guns should be “well-regulated,” he’s become their enemy. For their most devoted defenders, guns have become a reflexive right. We have the right to own guns so we can have guns in case someone wants to regulate your guns.
The point of having guns isn’t to have guns. We have guns to protect our selves and to hunt, but the reason they are constitutionally protected is to ensure “the security of a free state.”
There’s a word for those who would take up arms against our government, and it’s not “patriots.” If you have a gun to protect yourself against someone regulating your gun, then what you love isn’t America, or freedom, but your gun.
A friend of mine fought in Iraq with the 101st Airborne. He says, “If people want to play with guns that badly, let them join the Army,” which, when you think about it, is one kind of a well-regulated militia.
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© Copyright 2013 Jason Stanford, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Jason Stanford is a nationally syndicated columnist, author and Democratic political consultant who lives in Texas. He can be reached at stanford@oppresearch.com and on Twitter @jasstanford.
This column has been edited by the author. Representations of fact and opinions are solely those of the author.
Do you even know the difference between a country and a government. We hold our 2nd amendment rights dearly because they protect us from tyrannical governments foreign and domestic. These patriots wish to defend our country and constitution not our government.
Perhaps you should go look up the meaning of well regulated as written in the 1700’s. It means to be well conditioned and in proper working order. That means having the best arms available. Better yet go look up the meaning of militia back then. Militia is “the people”. And most importantly look up freedom, you clearly have no idea what it takes to be free.
100 million people died in the 20th century because they did not have the arms to defend themselves.
Did you know the Chinese have the freedom on religion, and speech. They have property rights. They do not have the right to bear arms. Those 64 students at Tienanmen Square lost there lives for exercising their free speech.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When the government has all the guns, they have all the power.
You show a militia man with a musket and mock a man with “hundreds of rounds per minute”. Your argument is clear, we shouldn’t have that many rounds since the founders would have never imagined the lethal force of our current weapons. Our founders could have never imagined the reach of the internet either. Perhaps you should go back to using your freedom of press and speech with a printing press capable of 1 page at a time.
This article smacks of contempt for our constitution and contempt for the patriots who choose to defend it. You should be ashamed of yourself.
If this writer wants to be an English teacher, sent him/her to C.U.. What is said here is pure drivel and does not warrant the space it takes. I question whether this writer has the qualifications to discuss the meaning of our Constitution.
Are you Stupid< maybe you need to stick your head back up obamas ass
Last I knew, we called the people who took up arms to oppose British tyranny the Founding Fathers. The constitutionalists among them we called the Framers. Those groups, in lucid, plain English, presented their thoughts on the 2nd Amendment. In a nutshell, the 2nd Amendment provides a measure of security from tyrannical power both inside and outside the State. For that reason, the State finds it necessary to preserve the right to keep and bear arms.
As well, the Constitution notes unenumerated rights, things we take for granted as rights like the right to privacy. Keeping personal arms for personal reasons (not necessarily serving the security needs of the State) falls in that category. We also recognize English Common Law as the basis of our legal code. Those laws also establish the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The history of the right to keep and bear arms extends well before the 2nd Amendment was written. If you take the time to read more about it, the references abound and make the case very clearly.
Why is this in the news again? Look at the date!