Steve of CA wrote: Personally I do not own a gun and would not feel safer if I had one, but I do not have a problem with law abiding people buying guns. That being the case, I have to ask of Mr. Ransom and others here, what controls, if any, do you favor over the purchase and use of weapons, including semi-automatic weapons such as the one used by the killer in Aurora? Or do you think we have too much gun control with the laws we have now? - The American Solution: Reach for the Guns
Dear Steve,
The 2nd Amendment allows no restrictions on a citizen’s right to arm themselves, although various Supreme Court decisions- which I disagree with- have allowed the government to restrict the right to bear arms through permitting and sale restrictions.
Proponents of gun-control argue that the phrase “well regulated militia” means that the founders only intended that the right to bear arms would apply to a militia. But the history of the term and the history of the right to bear arms would argue against that conclusion. Instead, it is clear that a plain reading of the 2nd Amendment considers a well regulated militia as an outgrowth of the individual’s right to arm themselves:
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.
In other words, in order to have a well regulated militia, sufficient to ensure the security of a free state, you must first allow no infringement on the right of people to keep and bear arms.
The 2nd Amendment is not the right to a militia, nor the right a free state; it is instead a blanket denial of the government’s ability to infringe on the right of the individual to arm themselves to protect their freedoms.
