The 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is probably the most hotly debated item in the US today. What does it guarantee? To whom do these guarantees pertain? If the 2nd Amendment doesn’t guarantee rights to citizens as a whole, what other parts of the Constitution don’t apply to citizens, either? Why is it even in the Bill of Rights if it only covers a small group? Does this group even exist, anymore? Does it need to exist? I could throw questions here all day long. Unfortunately, due to peoples’ attention spans relating to blogs, I have about five minutes to make my case, so let’s get to it.
Why do we have the 2nd Amendment? As a nation, we had just fought and won our freedom in the Revolutionary war over seven years. There are many reasons the war was fought: Taxes, representation, religious freedom, and respect as a colony (or lack of respect, as it was). There is little debate that the catalyst that started it all, however, was the disarming of the colonies because of fear of rebellion. Ironically, it was the British acting on this fear that actually caused the rebellion. The King ruled that the colonists must disarm. After the colonies won their freedom, we had to establish our nation. The Constitution was ratified in 1788. However, after further discussion, more freedoms needed to be shown specifically. That’s where the Bill of Rights came from. The Founding Fathers wanted to make sure certain things were identified as so precious to our nation that they be specifically guaranteed. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom from quartering of troops, and the list goes on. Every one of these freedoms was to specifically (sorry, I use this a lot) speak to something that was done by the British to us. They wanted anyone who would ask to know that these things would never happen again. The British tried to disarm us so that we would not rise up and challenge their rule. The 2nd Amendment is to ensure that we would NEVER be at risk of our nation trying to go rogue on us – we have, and were guaranteed to always have, weapons with which to continually secure our freedoms.
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 the specific wording of the 2nd Amendment. There is much debate about this amendment. Most of this debate is focused around who the militia is. The militia, during this time, was a fighting aged male. The US Code, and every single State, has similar, if not exact wording on who is in the militia and how is it formed. I will use the US Code here.
Title 10 U.S. Code § 246. Militia: composition and classes
(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.
Title 32 U.S. Code § 313. Appointments and enlistments: age limitations.
To be eligible for original enlistment in the National Guard, a person must be at least 17 years of age and under 45, or under 64 years of age and a former member of the Regular Army, Regular Navy, Regular Air Force, or Regular Marine Corps.
Now that we know the militia is nearly everyone in the US, we need to ask ourselves why disarmament is sought by some of our leaders.
We have weapons now that are in keeping with the current technology, just as we did back then, so it’s not the technology. One only needs to look to what else in the Bill of Rights is under assault to understand what is happening. Freedom of Speech is holy in our nation, so that’s not it. Freedom of the press is let loose on us to the degree that we have complete news networks providing editorials paraded as news, so quite obviously, that’s not it. Ah, but then we come to freedom of religion. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” We have to threaten to sue to be allowed to pray in public in many places. How did this come to be? Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut letting them know that there was, “a wall of separation between church and state.” This entire letter had been used many times in our nation’s history in our courts to uphold that the wall exists to keep religion safe from the state because they understood that establishment was a noun and protected individual rights. However, in 1947, the Court held in Everson v Board of Education that establishment was meant as a verb and therefore not and individual right, but as a protection of the government from religion. They only used the words, “a wall of separation between church and state,” (not the entire letter) in this decision, thereby divorcing the desired effect from its original meaning.
“Wait, Bill. How does this pertain to the topic here?” You see, the main change between then and now is our view on God. We no longer allow a moral compass to guide us as a nation. Our Founding Fathers, most of whom were devout Christians, decided that these were important to have in our Constitution. In fact, John Adams, as we saw, said that our Constitution is not really to be used by a non-religious people. Those who are taking apart our Constitution, bit by bit, are, in my humble opinion, doing so out of a deep hatred of all things God. They destroy our Founding Fathers’ reputations whenever possible, by assigning our ‘woke’ understanding of our life to their lives and situations from two and a half centuries ago. They need God completely removed; they are currently working to remove freedom of speech from our country, by assigning “hate-speech” to anything they don’t agree with; they assign hated labels to those they don’t like. It’s kind-of easy to see who’s doing all this: Who boos God in their conventions? Who opens theirs with prayer?
OMG, Bill!! This is all conjecture and speculation! Really? Virginia Anti-Militia Bill. New California Anti-Gun Laws. Right…conjecture. If you believe that it’s important to keep our freedoms – all of our freedoms – you need to study and be heard. Make sure to look into the platforms of the party you find yourself aligned with. If you see words like ‘restrict,’ ‘dangerous,’ and ‘remove,’ you may have aligned yourself with those not only willing to but wanting to take your freedoms. If you see videos or interviews where someone is trying to explain why you don’t need any weapons that you currently have the right to have, you may have aligned yourself with those willing to take your rights. Where will they stop? Who will stop them if they take away the right that protects all the other rights? Vote. Vote correctly. Vote American.