The Second Amendment – The Necessity of a Well-regulated Militia
Militia—An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers. – American Heritage Dictionary
Greetings my fellow Americans!
As we continue our march through the first ten amendments to our national Constitution, I’d like to reiterate that I am neither a legal nor constitutional scholar, and am not writing this series to unpack all of the so-called “precedent” which has accumulated on atop what had been a beautifully succinct and plain-spoken document for the society and culture for which it was originally written. Rather, I seek to explicate, to the best of my ability, the meaning of the Founder’s original words and phraseology, in an attempt to re-hone deep appreciation for that intent, and the civic responsibility We, The People, all still have in preserving, protecting and defending it.
The full text of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 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.”

I’m going to focus on the first half of this for the rest of this article: “A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,…” Setting aside all of the anti-gun chatter, “State” here means one of the originally thirteen—now fifty—sovereignties which were relatively autonomous and unencumbered under our federated republican system, with citizens who were deemed as necessary to be able to defend themselves against threats to their respective States. And though the word Congress does not appear here as in Amendment One, the use of “State” implies the prohibition of monolithic legislation or action on the part of the national government in domestic affairs. The last thing our Founders ever wanted was a national army (or agency of any kind—FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) being created and turned inward to the policing of American citizens. (Aside: Amendment 17 effectively destroyed the notion of individual State sovereignty, and needs to be repealed if we are ever to return to a true federated republic.)
The fundamental premise here, as in all of our founding documents, is that all human beings are, by nature, fallen and flawed, and governments are no less wholly comprised of such people than any other organization. Our novel systems of civilization and society were originally replete with checks and balances designed to thwart the undue accumulation of power and control by any one domestic person or faction. Most of those checks were codified and enacted as laws via the social compact which is our Constitution; this amendment explicated a last-resort measure, enacted with the recognition that people do not always obey the law, and/or that law is as imperfect as the people who write it. In other words, the Founders recognized a divine and fundamental right to self-defense of the life endowed to them by their Creator; they knew from history, as well as personal first-hand experience, that relying solely on government to defend this right bestows that power on humans who will naturally tend to lord it over those without it, and subject to curtailing if not outright withdrawal in exchange for subjection or servitude.
We, as citizens of these United States, as well as our respective “free State[s],” have a responsibility to keep our individual States free, as well as ourselves. The first clause of this Second Amendment puts the onus of a “well-regulated Militia” on We the People to ensure that security. The first, and best, options are to do so peaceably and by granting authority to, and holding accountable, those at the local and State levels who vow to truly uphold those rights endowed by our Creator. We also have a responsibility under this amendment to maintain a last-resort measure should those to whom authority for upholding our individual divine rights has been granted should decide that they no longer need to do so.
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“A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,…” is the qualifier.
“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” is the law.
The qualifier is the part that the left try to make people think it is something that says the militia, now that there is a standing army, is made obsolete. It doesn’t matter any other intent, except that the intent was made in writing as the law, which is now finally being understood in a historical and textual way, which says that no laws can be made that infringe on the 2nd Amendment, which is how all the gun laws will eventually be repealed by decision. And that is all because of the left’s desire to disarm American citizens, which is something the 2nd Amendment expressly prohibits. I just read an article where a lawyer tried his best to undermine Heller and MacDonald, by throwing out theories including stare decisis and others that question Scalia’s decision, which I think just says a position on that lawyer’s view of what the 2nd Amendment should be read as, instead of what an English teacher would read it as. And, as far as crime control, the 2nd Amendment does not apply, except by crimes against the people by the federal and state governments. Criminal law is a separate category of law.
One could even take the 2nd Amendment to include the felon of a crime involving a gun, that after his punishment is complete, his rights should be restored, voting rights and gun rights, all of them, because of the amendment about cruel and unusual punishment, but I’ll leave it at that. Some have actually argued that, and I’m not sure I disagree with them. Good article!