In Defense of the Second Amendment

Discouraged by the Florida shooting and frustrated by the knee jerk reactions and the obvious failures to head off the trauma by agencies designed to do so, I have tried in this writing for solace in personal and shared understandings of what the Second Amendment is about and why it was created. Blame is always counter productive. 

The German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe observed: "We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases."

Hopefully, a quiet voice will clarify the necessity for and the power of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence spoke of ‘unalienable rights’ for the people but our newly created Constitution was basically a document which detailed federal  powers, procedures and protections. The second amendment was written in part to protect the nation from dangers from without and in part to protect the people from the government itself.

The Second Amendment has two parts: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” That well regulated Militia would historically be manned by the entire adult male citizenry. Those men were not simply allowed to keep their own arms, but “affirmatively required to do so.”

Because the people were afraid that a powerful government might ultimately turn on them as the king of England did to his subjects there is a second part: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

William Blackstone a 1700’s English jurist was well known by our founders. He was famous for his commentaries of ‘Common Law’ that most people could read. One of his principle commentaries was the ‘rights of persons’. “Blackstone saw political overtones in the right to arms” and this probably explains why our Second Amendment is preceded by the rights of religion, expression, press and petition (First Amendment) and then followed by the guarantee against quartering of soldiers (Third Amendment) and then followed by the protection of unreasonable searches and seizures (Fourth amendment). These four amendments all speak to the rights of the people. They combine to “form an umbrella of individual protection” which, in my opinion, makes them unalienable. (They cannot be given or taken away.)