Right or Responsibility

Right or Responsibility?

 The Second Amendment is about Right but it is mostly about Responsibility. The Amendment is a clarification of something in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution on the powers of Congress and one of those powers is, "To provide for calling forth the Militia (for 3 purposes), to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel invasions." This should now be followed by the 2nd Amendment which reads, "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."
In a sense the "idea" of a Militia is now obsolete since we have a well-armed professional military made up of branches of defined areas of service. The National Guard is as close to the "idea" of a Militia that remains. The 2nd Amendment tells all citizens that they have the right to bear arms because they have the responsibility to serve their country if called to do so by Congress. But we are now a Nation able to provide a standing army with the necessary weapons for the defense and security of a free State. Our "militia" is well regulated and well armed but I agree that if we are going to keep the 2nd Amendment then we need people to not only register their guns but to register to serve in any branch of the military they may choose should Congress call on them to do so.

The reason we no longer understand the Constitution or the 2nd Amendment is two fold. First it was written at a time when most people did have their own guns (they were necessary to provide food for the table as well as self-protection in a country not yet able to protect it's citizens from criminals or those dreaded native peoples who only wanted to live where they had always lived). So the Country called on them to serve by bringing their own gun to the fight. Unless they took up that responsibility, the country might have remained part of the British Empire.  The Second reason is like the first, we are not familiar with the context in which it's written, interpretations have crept in to replace how it was understood by those who wrote the words.
So, if we keep the 2nd Amendment it only makes sense that those not qualified to be a Member of the Militia, should not keep and bear Arms. The 2nd Amendment defines our Right but mainly our Responsibility to serve our country.

The NRA fear-filled prognostications demean the Constitution as well as the intent of the 2nd Amendment. The NRA lobby's Congress for laws that protect, not gun owners, but gun SALES. And the government, which by the way is US (You know, We the people....), aids the gun salesmen by not regulating guns and ammunition as they should be regulated. The NRA promotes the "Right" only and ignores and wants you to ignore the "Responsibility" of gun ownership. Your ownership cannot be infringed because of the deep responsibility the amendment lays on that ownership.
The NRA has twisted the meaning for so long that I don't expect you to see it clearly but I hope that you will try for the sake of all of us.

Are you with me?

I'm adding this addendum because it's time to recognize the truth.  A mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, December 14, 2012, resulting in the deaths of 20 children, none older than 6 and 6 adults forces us to face once again the results of our gun-worshipping culture.  When the Bush Administration let the Assault weapons ban expire in 2004, the door was opened to allow military grade weapons to be in the hands of non-military personnel.  So now we must look at what we have done.  No one stood up to try to stop this atrocity or if they did, the effort was weak and ineffectual so now what....well I want you to read an excerpt from an article by Cass R. Sunstein, the Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard University which reads: "...Warren Burger was a conservative Republican appointed chief justice by President Richard Nixon in 1969.  In a speech in 1992, six years after his retirement from the court, Burger declared that 'the Second Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to have firearms at all.'  In his view, the purpose was only 'to ensure that the state armies---the militia---would be maintained for the defense of the state.'
A year before Burger went even further on MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Burger said the Second Amendment, 'has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud--I repeat the word fraud--on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.' "
Sunstein goes on to say, "It is striking that before the 2008 decision in District of Columbia vs Heller, the Supreme Court had NEVER held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have guns.  For almost seven decades the Court's leading decision was U.S. vs Miller.  The 1939 case involved a ban on the possession of a saw-off shotgun.  Sounding like Burger, the court unanimously said that the Second Amendment's 'obvious purpose' was 'to assure the constitution and render possible the effectiveness of'' the militia."
Professor Sunstein ends his article by saying, "It is past time to stop using the Second Amendment itself as a loaded weapon, threatening elected representatives who ought to be doing their jobs."
Personally I am glad to find that there is judicial support for my stand on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.  However, unless we as a people see the "fraud" perpetrated on us by special interest groups to misinterpret the 2nd Amendment to mean something it was never intended to mean, we will continue to face the horrors of mass shootings involving our children, our friends and our fellow Americans of all colors and ages.  Is that what we want?  I know I don't want it so....

Are you still with me?

Addendum:  They have ALL forgotten or been taught to ignore the CONDITION upon which the "right" to bear arms is predicated..."A well-regulated Militia. being necessary to the security of a free state," Personally, since the "free state" now has money enough to arm any number of military personnel, the 2nd Amendment should be repealed. It is, in fact, a totally unnecessary Amendment to the Constitution. But the problem is that the common belief about the 2nd Amendment has now trumped it's original intent. And no one wishes to correct it because people believe the Constitution gives them the right to keep and bear arms, when in fact it doesn't, not for any reason. Does it restrict people from gun ownership? It does not but in this day and age, since it is apparent that quite a number of gun owners fear the government will take their gun rather than regulate, require registration, and licensing....we have a huge job of re-education ahead of us. Meanwhile, the police are going to have one heck of a job keeping these nuts and the rest of the nuts off the streets in order to protect citizens without guns.