The controversy over the second Amendment and your rights to “bare arms”

                           The controversy over the second Amendment and your rights to “bare arms”




Amendment II

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 spite of extensive recent discussion and much legislative action with respect to regulation of the purchase, possession, and transportation of firearms, as well as proposals to substantially curtail ownership of firearms, there is no definitive resolution by the courts of just what right the Second Amendment protects. The opposing theories, perhaps oversimplified, are an “individual rights” thesis whereby individuals are protected in ownership, possession, and transportation, and a “states’ rights” thesis whereby it is said the purpose of the clause is to protect the States in their authority to maintain formal, organized militia units, Whatever the Amendment may mean, it is a bar only to federal action, not extending to state or private restraints. The Supreme Court has given effect to the dependent clause of the Amendment in the only case in which it has tested a congressional enactment against the constitutional prohibition, seeming to affirm individual protection but only in the context of the maintenance of a militia or other such public force.

After that thought let me point out that the purpose designed by this amendment was to “keep and bare arms” to protect the country. Not as some would try to convince themselves to protect themselves from the Government.



And while the spokesmen for the Corporate Gun lobby the NRA will try to tell you that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” And that what we need is more teachers and people with guns in our schools. I think that the parents of the Sandy Hook school, or Combine, or Aurora theater might disagree. What if instead more guns and assault rifles designed for the single purpose of killing people and not for hunting we had less? I would be foolish to think that all Americans would not want to have some sort of protection. But massive amounts of firepower doesn’t make any one safer.


 Those who have and hold  so many guns only show me that they are inadequate in other areas of their life.