Gun Rights ??

I came across an interesting quotation the other day.  The first part of it stated, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.”  It seems to be referencing some historical times when the infancy of some type of government was being established.   Actually it refers to the birth of our nation, during Revolutionary War times and its exact meaning was clearly defined for 70 years prior to 2008.  During that time the Supreme Court and federal courts held that the statement only applied in the context of militias, the rights of states to protect themselves from federal or international interference by the formation of such entities. 

However, most scholars agreed that as our nation continued to evolve this statement had outlived its usefulness and was no longer relevant.  For most, the notion of formulating militias to protect states from federal government interference had no relevance in the 19^th, 20^th, or 21^st centuries.

By now I’m sure those astute readers have guessed that I have quoted the first part of the Second Amendment of our nation’s Constitution which is the sacred cow of all gun advocacy groups.  Unfortunately this part of the Second Amendment is curiously seldom quoted in the defense of an individual’s Constitutional right to own a firearm.   Instead only the last part “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed upon” is the supportive evidence professed as justification for the right to gun ownership. 

So basically what we have is a Constitutional amendment written almost 250 years ago, which most scholars agree is now totally irrelevant, but according to the NRA, and other gun advocacy groups is relevant based upon only its second part which advocates the right of gun ownership even though that second part is intrinsically connected to the previous irrelevant part.  In fact, the entire amendment 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 upon."  You cannot selectively take parts of the Second Amendment out of context.  It must be applicable in total.

I have no problems with some gun ownership but let’s stop tying it to the Constitution as God given justification for that right.  It was, in fact, the 2008 Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision, in the case of the District of Columbia vs Heller, which attempted to interpret the original intent of the Second Amendment and apply it to an individual’s right of gun ownership.

In that 2008 decision, the conservative justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in which for the first time in this country’s history, the Second Amendment was systematically altered by separating the possession of a firearm from the requirement of being a member of a militia and the Supreme Court explicitly affirming an individual’s right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense.

Gun advocates need to stop hiding behind the Second Amendment as justification for gun ownership for in reality the justification comes from the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 OPINION, not an amendment that is clearly archaic.