Posted: 24 April 2024 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | 12
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For almost two centuries the Second Amendment was read very selectively. Most people took “the right to keep and bear arms” in isolation, ignoring the very significant verbiage around that phrase. The opening clause, for example, presents the “security of a free state” as the justification for unchecked possession of “arms” by civilians. But the march of history trampled that concept with so many people choosing to pretend that it didn’t. I mean, how long has it been since the security of any free state has truly depended on armed civilians? When the Founding Fathers added the Second Amendment, the newly spawned nation had very little in the way of a real standing army, and anything beyond that was microscopic at best. (And, no, the Continental Army did not liberate any airports in New Jersey.) With an invading professional army and navy storming our shore, we really did need rapid response from We the People. But even the shapers of the Constitution were prescient enough to know that rough and tumble formation would solidify as the Nation matured. So they defined the Right to Bear Arms as being necessary in support of “well regulated militia(s)”—establishing another problem for the selective readers. For many insist that gun ownership is needed to protect the People from the government. This kind of skips over the fact that only the government can “regulate”, so by setting themselves against the government, the gun nuts effectively VOID their protection under the Second Amendment..
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