The Bill of Rights is not merely an important part of the constitution; it is at the very heart of it. And despite the opportunism of Democrat politicians, the second amendment cannot be divorced from the rest of it. The second amendment is part of the heritage of our country, the culmination of a historic process. That’s the story I’m about to tell.
When Spanish, French, and English colonists started settling North America, epidemics had already hurt Indian population. North America was a wilderness, and getting wilder by the year. Life in the expanding frontier was hard, with hostile Indians a constant danger. In such circumstances guns were part of American life from the beginning. Colonists banded together and formed militias to protect against such danger. With government an ocean away, they had to rely on themselves to survive.
With the rifle an important part of American life by the time of the revolutionary crisis, the Virginia declaration of rights praised the militia as the proper institution for a free state. Notice the wording:
Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
Move forward thirteen years or so, to the time of the debate over the constitution. James Madison had been one of the reviewers of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and about that time he was arguing AGAINST a Bill of Rights, and ratifying the Constitution without it. But Madison lost the argument, and he was trusted with the responsibility of drafting that same Bill of Rights. Notice the wording of the Second Amendment:
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.
Similar wording, affirming a right that Americans took for granted and enshrining it into the Constitution.
What I’m arguing is this: the right and responsibility to bear arms grew up organically from the American experience. It has been with us for hundreds of years, and we should not let anybody take it. If there is a fight we must win, this is it.
