There is no good reason to think that we’re going to have an educated debate in this country about the history and meaning of the Second Amendment and our gun ownership policies but, even so, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Americans approached the question with at least a little knowledge about where it came from and what it means. You know — just in case.
The American Revolution was fought on American soil, and at a time when communications were difficult and a representative would spend a long time traveling to meetings of the Continental Congress. Communications were made still more difficult, and the travel even longer, if the representative had to detour around a hostile British army.
The result is that the Congress didn’t authorize expenditures for the war in a timely manner, and General Washington was unable to pay his troops; they, with no money to send home to the farm, started defecting.
Fast forward to the Constitutional Convention called after the Articles of Confederation failed. The new constitution drafted by James Madison et. al. specified that the Congress had to prepare a budget every year, and additionally specified that expenditures for a standing army could be authorized for two years.
Article !, Section 8: The Congress shall have Power … To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two years;
This was a direct response to the difficulties experienced by Washington when the Congress was unable to meet.
The provision was greeted by the Donald Trump wannabes of the day with cries of … Tyranny!
Figure to yourselves, my dear brethren, a man with a plantation just sufficient to raise a competency for himelf and his dear little children; but by reason of the immoderate revenue necessary to support the emperor, the illustrious well born Congress, the standing army &c. &cc. he necessarily fails in the payment of his taxes …1 [emphases in original]
You get the idea.
Thus the Second Amendment, which guarantees to the states the right to raise a militia and protect itself from the federal government if it were to intrude upon its prerogatives. James Madision — remember, the chief architect of the Constitution, and certainly no village crank — makes this explicit in Federalist 46.
On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand.
[ … ]
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.
Then came the Civil War, when some of the states did indeed raise militias and challenge the federal government — and lost. That defeat notwithstanding, the common understanding of the Second Amendment remained unchanged: the individual states may maintain a militia, and the militia is whatever an individual state says is its militia.
The Civil War was followed by the Reconstruction amendments, and the Fourteenth Amendment included this provision right up front:
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That highlighted portion, contrary to more than 200-years of understanding, has lately been interpreted to mean that the Constitution grants an individual right to own a gun. By the way, and contrary to the relentless lies published by the Propaganda Underground, President Obama supports that interpretation.
I do not. The Founders’ plainly-stated intent was that the states could raise a “well-regulated militia” in order to protect itself against federal encroachments; they very certainly did not authorize ownership of firearms by any and every crackpot with a half-baked grievance.
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1 Benjamin Workman, Independent Gazatteer, 1787-Dec-19
