The real 2nd Amendment. Not the revenge fantasies of racists and conspiracy theorists, jammed through the courts. Especially not twisting the 2nd Amendment into a right to guns for self-defense in the home, where they put owners and families and friends at greater risk than criminals (suicide included).
So all right, what does the second amendment say, and what does it mean?
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.
Let's break that down.
TL;DR It means that the Federal Government may not disarm a state militia, and it means that states must regulate their militias. At the time, it meant that individuals in the countryside could and should own individual single shot black powder flintlock hunting rifles.
A well regulated Militia,
Two centuries ago, states could call on every able-bodied man to turn up as the state militia in cases of emergency, bringing their personal weapons.
being necessary to the security of a free State,
In some states that mainly meant fighting Indians, capturing escaped slaves, and putting down slave rebellions. Before the Revolution, it meant opposing illegal royal government actions for which there was no other remedy, but those days are over.
The most spectacular case was the Whiskey Rebellion against Alexander Hamilton's Whiskey Tax, among moonshiners in the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia. George Washington federalized the Pennsylvania militia and rode out at its head. He is thus the only sitting President to lead troops to battle, although the rebels actually faded away into the hills, and that was that.
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
But such militias are now a minor part of the picture.
Today, as defined by the Militia Act of 1903, the term "militia" is used to describe two classes within the United States:[8]
- Organized militia – consisting of State militia forces; notably, the National Guard and Naval Militia.[9]
- Unorganized militia – composing the Reserve Militia: every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age, not a member of the National Guard or Naval Militia.[10]
A third militia is a state defense force. It is authorized by state and federal laws.
If you want to join the National Guard or Naval Militia and bear weapons of war, including tanks and fighter jets, you can keep them in the well-regulated National Guard Armory and other such facilities. And the Federal government can't stop you or your state doing it. But the state has every right and duty to regulate who can join the National Guard, and who gets to train with which weapons.
According to the text, therefore, there is no inherent right to have guns at home. OK, that is not how the Right, including too many judges, see the matter. But it can be. It is up to us.
The first fantasy about the Second Amendment is the English Civil War, Protestant Parliamentary Roundheads vs. the Church of England, King Charles I, and the Cavalier aristocracy. The result of the English Civil War was a Protestant theocracy under Oliver Cromwell, and the attempt to impose it not just on England and Wales, but on Scotland and Ireland as well. In Ireland, it resulted in the Protestant Ascendancy and hundreds of years of Catholic uprisings against English and later Scottish oppressors. But wait! We're supposed to have the guns, not them!
So now we have Dominionist Evangelical Protestants fantasizing about taking down the anti-religious Federal government and imposing "true" Christianity on everyone in the US, and if possible the world. And a lot of other fantasists writing fan fiction about the Constitution.
But they seem to forget that the Cavaliers came back and restored King Charles II after his exile on the island of Jersey under French protection, and the oppression of dissenting Protestants resumed in force. The true resolution of the conflicts among Catholics, the Church of England, and dissenting Protestants was toleration, which took another century to realize officially, even if not in popular prejudices.
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
Men are qualified for civil liberty
- in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,
- in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,
- in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,
- in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Edmund Burke, once the Father of Conservatism, but today just another lousy elitist knee-jerk Liberal.
Links
The Second Amendment: A Biography, by Michael Waldman
The Marshall Project: Second Amendment, a curated collection of links
Working Hard to Misconstrue the 2nd Amendment
Gallup: Guns
64% of Americans want stricter gun laws. 7% want less strict laws. But Republican legislatures have been putting through more permissive laws in every Red state, because they think that these are base voters who will turn out at high rates, while opponents won't care enough.
It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Machiavelli, The Prince
But we don't have to conform to their ideas, and we don't.
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
The reasonable man [sic; but that was then] adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
No, George, the unreasonable woman is even more effective.