Written for the American people of the 18th century, when the nascent nation was made up of 99.99% frontier farm families, without any police force outside of State Militias made up of the men of their communities from 14 to 45; the 2nd Amendment made it legal for those men to buy and maintain their own firearm, so that when their Militia was called up for service by the Governor or the County Sheriff, they were ready to take up arms and protect their community and their country.
That was nearly 2 and a half centuries ago. Today, only 2% of Americans are farmers, and even on modern farms, local and state police, the National Guard and the FBI are as close as a telephone call for assistance.
So why do America and Americans cling so tightly to this anachronistic Law?
What the Founding Fathers really meant when they wrote the 2nd Amendment:The Second Amendment was created so that the states could form militias or armies to destroy insurrections or slave rebellions because the federal government had no standing military for a long time. The Founding Fathers were frightened by a standing army, because they feared coups. Without a standing army, the only protection the people and the government had were militias
The U. S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, states:
“The Congress shall have Power ... To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;”
Note that there could be a permanent navy, but not a standing army. Note also the Constitution explicitly states what militias do: they make sure the laws are followed, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. This was a lesson learned after Shays Rebellion of 1786-1787 and The Whiskey Rebellion 1791-1794. The Militia Act of 1792 also explicitly directs the president’s use of militias; see The Militia Act of 1792.
Today, in the 21st century, America has the biggest and most powerful standing Army in the history of the world. America has state, county and city police forces. The FBI, the CIA and an alphabet soup of intelligence agencies — all to defend and protect the Constitution, the nation and The People.
There is simply no need for individual Americans to “keep and bear arms” for the purposes of Community and National security in the modern era — which are the reasons why the 2nd was written. From the federal perspective, it was for national security. For the States of the south, especially, it was a guarantee that any County Sheriff could call up a Militia to hunt down runaway slaves and return them to bondage.
Beginning in the 1970s, Americans were exposed to the idea, pushed by early ammosexuals, that the 2nd Amendment was written explicitly to ensure that Americans would always be assured that no tyrannical government could overcome them, that people in their homes with firearms could fight off any government which tipped over from Democracy into Tyranny.
It was a part of the late 20th century propaganda from the NRA which emerged from the anti-War years of the 60s; instead of promoting hunter’s rights in the various states, and sponsoring Gun Safety for 12 year olds across the country, this new NRA rose up and began to run political messaging about the dangers of a Federal Government forcing gun registration on this wonderful nation of individuals who needed to be free of any such registration of their firearms — then the government would know who had guns and could come and take them in the dead of night!
It was, of course, nothing less than conspiracy theory run wild. But it was a winner for the new NRA, seeking power via the Republican politicians happy to take their campaign donations and write legislation friendly to the gun manufacturers and retailers (the very people who also donated to the NRA and funded all of its activities, too).
A few decades later, a SCOTUS finding in 2008 which said, for the first time in US History, that individual Americans had an inherent Right to ‘keep and bear firearms’ separate from any attendance or membership in any Militia. That the two clauses of the 2nd Amendment were each independent of each other. A furthering of the trend in ideas about guns and individual Americans, that the 2nd speaks directly to every American and not for the purposes of ensuring the safety of the nation or their own community; but for their own individual safety and security.
The underlying problem there is that even in an era when there has been a federal law prohibiting the CDC from studying Gun Violence in light of Public Health, there have been plenty of studies on whether owning and having a personal firearm makes you safer in your own home — and it doesn’t.
Mother Jones: 10 pro-gun myths
Myth #5: Keeping a gun at home makes you safer
Fact-check: Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun. • For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home. • 43 percent of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm. • In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.
Our menfolk are no longer required by law to join a local Militia and ‘keep and bear’ a firearm to bring when the Militia is called up for Service.
Individuals no longer face a dangerous landscape of invaders and criminal bands roaming the countryside bent on mayhem and mischief, while trapped on a remote farm, far from any help.
The Founder’s fears of a standing Army have long since waned; in fact most Americans today revere our all volunteer Armed Forces and are quite happy that the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the Reserves and the National Guard all exist to ensure our protection and defense.
What exactly is it that the 2nd Amendment makes possible today? The legal purchase of weapons of war, designed to kill a lot of human beings as quickly as possible, by someone as young as 18 years old and in many circumstances, without a single check on whether or not the person has any issues which would make them either ineligible or unsuited to owning a deadly firearm. Which is what is driving these continued shootings in public spaces, almost always of strangers.
If NONE of the reasons which made the 2nd Amendment a necessary component of Federal Law in the 18th century remain AND only deleterious effects are the result of maintaining the 2nd Amendment in its current form — then WHAT is the argument for keeping things like they are?Because it appears that what that portends is a continued assault on American communities, of attacks on their children in their schools. That American children will continue to be forced to die horrible, tragic, meaningless deaths at the end of a high-velocity rifle designed to be used in a war. Because this is what is being used in these mass, public shooting attacks:
x#GunControlNow#Parkland#NRAIsATerroristOrganizationpic.twitter.com/jDOY3RsksX
— Debbie Sideris🌈â„🌊 (@debbiesideris) February 15, 2018Do any of the people (like me) outraged over what’s going on in this country, when it comes to firearms and violence in America, want hunters to give up hunting or target shooting? No, we don’t. But we don’t think hunters or target shooters need access to AR-15s or that people who want to commit mass murders and become infamous from it to be able to make those dreams become the nightmares of victims who live through the terror these people inflict on crowds as large as 22,000 (the Las Vegas shooting, where 59 died and over 500 were wounded by a single man with a large number of firearms and massive amounts of ammunition).
Since the base law which protects guns over people is the 2nd Amendment, it’s time to either re-write it or repeal it entirely. It serves no purpose but to ensure the United States of America remains a live shooting gallery; where no one is safe from a stranger with a desire to kill and access to high-velocity, rapid-fire weapons of war — not in a shopping mall, not in a church service, not in a school, not on a military installation, not anywhere.
It’s simple now, truly.
Choose the kind of nation we want to be.
Choose our kids or choose the guns.