What the Second Amendment really meant to the Founders

[Arkansas Granny]

Love it or hate it, the Second Amendment provides the constitutional framework for American gun laws. As with all things constitutional, Americans are adapting 18th-century laws to fit 21st-century lives. But in reality, the concerns of the Founding Fathers had little to do with either side’s position in the modern gun-control debate. None of the issues animating that debate — from “stand your ground” laws to assault weapons bans — entered into the Founders’ thinking.

Yet because both sides in debates about the Second Amendment invoke what the Founders would have thought, it’s important to look at what they actually intended.

1. The Founding Fathers were devoted to the militia.

Read the debates about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the militia’s importance leaps off the page. Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, called a well-regulated militia “the most natural defense of a free country.” His anti-Federalist critics agreed with the need for a citizens’ militia, writing that “a well regulated militia, composed of the Yeomanry of the country, have ever been considered as the bulwark of a free people.”

Their disagreement was over how best to ensure that the militia was maintained, as well as how to divide up the roles of the national government versus state governments. But both sides were devoted to the idea that all citizens should be part-time soldiers, because both sides believed a standing army was an existential threat to the ideas of the revolution.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/02/22/what-the-second-amendment-really-meant-to-the-founders/?utm_term=.261f9187a79b

Very interesting read. I'm sure that some of the points related to race and availability of firearms are sure to raise some eyebrows.

[BigmanPigman]

1. It needs to be updated

to use as a precedent for our current technology, etc.

[dugog55]

2. The Second Amendment was about Slavery

It is outdated, no longer relevant to the times it was passed and needs revised. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

[Igel]

4. Overgeneralization.

For some, this is true. For most, probably not.

It's like the OP. I found it fascinating.

And checked out some of the references. Not all, by any means. They didn't quite say, in context, what the OP claimed. Strip out the rest of the paragraph, discourse, sure, they *could* mean that. But in context, where they lay for 200+ years, nah.

After finding that most of the sources were cited with that level of fidelity and integrity, I moved on to something else worthwhile. If you can't be faithful to your sources and instead make your sources faithful to you, there's no trust left.

[Toorich]

3. There wasn't a .....

standing Army then. Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill (actually Breed's Hill) were fought by locals who formed up to take on the Crown. Those patriots, along with other nonprofessional soldiers banded together, used the flintlocks and old swords and whatever else they could find to fight. Finally, with some experience and training, courage, and blind-pig luck those fellows came away with the win.

[Paladin]

5. I thought the 2nd was to to arm citizens against a tyrannical and oppressive government.

That was the lecture we got time-and-again from our pro-gun friends here at DU----back BEFORE trump's tyrannical and oppressive reign began.