History of America’s Right of the People to Keep & Bear Arms

Can the Right to Forcefully Defend One's Own Life -- Really be Canceled by Government?

The right to own weapons in America is under ever-increasing scrutiny and pressure, with constant demands for a blockade against such an antiquated notion. The recurrent specter of massacres which are endlessly replayed upon mainstream news stations only add to the sense that the US Constitution is an old instrument completely out of tune with the modern tenor.

According to the CDC, there were 11,078 firearm homicides last year in America.

And yet when one ponders hundreds of millions murdered arbitrarily, in just the last century, by governments refusing to accept civil rights—it gives one pause. Further, certainly guns stop a large number of crimes each year, with one writer estimating upwards of 12 million serious crimes in America. Certainly the number of stopped crimes is in the millions. And is this not better than being defenseless at home when a burglar breaks in and the police are many minutes away? Further, if we claim the Right to Life, Liberty and Happiness does not at least include the right to defend one’s own person against attack, could we possibly be correctly interpreting the Founder’s intent in the Constitution and Declaration? Did these brilliant men really expect law-abiding Americans to flush their rights down the commode and refuse to defend themselves to the point of suicidal non-resistance?

The Second Amendment reads

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.

But what does the Second Amendment really mean? And what is its history? This essay attempts a brief outline of these questions.

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