Some Thoughts on the 2nd Amendment

In studying the 2^nd Amendment and the history behind it, I as a pro-gun advocate have noticed several things, most of these have already been expounded upon in detail by other’s that support gun rights. I will merely mention them here as a background for this piece. The first one being that the people of the 2^nd Amendment are the same people as are referred to under the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th, and 10^th Amendments. Each of these other amendments have been upheld by courts to apply to individual citizens. That means the 2^nd Amendment is not solely for the arming of an army and/or National Guard force(s).

Secondly the Constitution was written in plain English (for the day) and would have been meant to have been easily understood by the vast majority of colonists to whom it would have applied. In fact the Constitution was not only circulated to large cities, but also to smaller hamlets/towns/settlements so that the colonists could read (or have it read) and discuss whether to approve it or not. Let us also not forget that at this point and time a sizeable portion of the population had at least one firearm in their homes to supply food, and aid in the town/settlements defense (remember, Indian attacks were very common at this time). Hunting at this time was not a “sport”, but rather a way of survival for a large part of the population.

From here you should have gotten the general idea, but I have one other point that is very rarely mentioned, or even brought up. We have all heard by now about the militia of the day and how each and every able bodied man was expected to take parts in the routine drills/exercises enough to be familiar with how a group of men fought as a group (at least in the military philosophies of the day). Each man was expected to provide his own weapon, but if he could not then one would be supplied for him.

Here is where things start to get interesting. What type of weapon do you think those that could supply their own brought along, a smooth-bore musket or a rifle? The vast majority showed up to these exercises with rifles, because the smooth-bore musket was not practical for everyday colonial life. The smooth-bore was the choice of the military because with large amounts of troops it was easier to reload and fire volleys than was the rifle. However, it was severely inaccurate as compared to the rifle. Hence a case could be made that the rifle in a way was far superior to the smooth-bore that was in common military usage. Therefore the founders by their wording of the 2^nd Amendment intended for the people to be able to arm themselves with firearms superior to those of the modern military, at least as far as accuracy is concerned.