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What the Second Amendment really means
To the editor:
I will not reply to the incoherent babble of the few in answer to our right to bear arms but instead I will offer copied comments from stated excerpts of fact attribitable to our founding fathers.
I do wish those of the anti-gun clique would simply read some of the messages sent from a number of our founders to others. And perhaps they should also take note their conversations dealt with the people and government and not about guns specifically.
Also note there are commas used in the Second Amendment separating the points and not a continuous inclusion. It actually separates the state and the people.
Every human being has the right to protect themselves and it matters not their means to do so whether that be a gun, a knife, a baseball bat or even their hands. No one has the right to deny a people that right.
The text of the Second Amendment reads in full: "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 framers of the Bill of Rights adapted the wording of the amendment from nearly identical clauses in some of the original 13 state constitutions.
During the Revolutionary War era, "militia" referred to groups of men who banded together to protect their communities, towns, colonies and eventually states, once the United States declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776.
Many people in America at the time believed governments used soldiers to oppress the people, and thought the federal government should only be allowed to raise armies (with full-time, paid soldiers) when facing foreign adversaries. For all other purposes, they believed, it should turn to part-time militias, or ordinary civilians using their own weapons.
So, shortly after the U.S. Constitution was officially ratified, James Madison proposed the Second Amendment as a way to empower these state militias.
While the Second Amendment did not answer the broader anti-Federalist concern that the federal government had too much power, it did establish the principle (held by both Federalists and their opponents) that 'the government did not have the authority to disarm its citizens.'
Diane L. Logan
Mifflintown