The American Spectator

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Say It With Bullets

By Robert VerBruggen on 2.26.08 @ 12:05AM

(Page 2 of 2)

FINALIZING THE AMENDMENT, lawmakers defeated a motion to insert the words "for the common defence" after "bear arms" and re-deleted the definition of "militia." Had either of those phrases made it in, the amendment's meaning would have been much clearer, but there's an important distinction between the two actions. The words "for the common defence" would have changed the amendment's meaning, and they were not allowed in. By contrast, merely removing a definition cannot change a law's meaning unless a new definition is added.

(Some historians who filed a Supreme Court brief for D.C. take the exact opposite approach -- "for the common defence" is somehow redundant, but the definition was removed to keep the government from having to maintain the entire population as a "well regulated" militia.)

The gun debate, not to mention gun technology, has changed significantly since the Founding era. The Constitution didn't spring from concerns about protection against crime, and there's no obvious way to decide what modern guns the Framers would have defined as "Arms."

But there's no doubt at all that the Second Amendment secures the right of the citizens to own guns. A read through The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms is a great way to understand that.

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