Saying the words “what the Founding Fathers intended” involves a lot of assumptions. No matter how brilliant they were, the men who put together the United States of America could hardly imagine the Industrial Revolution, let alone what came the following century.
In short, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights serve as great blueprints yet in many ways are dated documents. You see the problem in debates over the Second Amendment, which become noisy every time there’s a mass shooting in America.
People arguing gun issues often don’t know where the amendment came from and what it meant to our founders. With the noise louder than ever following the death of 17 students and teachers in Parkland, Florida, here are the biggest misconceptions and outright lies you’ll hear about the Second Amendment in 2018.
1. ‘It begins and ends with the right to bear arms.’
People who think this way are the same ones who share a headline on Facebook without reading the article. If you look at the Bill of Rights, you’ll find James Madison says quite a bit more:
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.
Any way you want to twist it, having “well regulated” at the start opens the door to any regulation Congress might want to pass. If anyone claims to be strict about interpreting the Constitution, it means reading the entire amendment — all 27 words of it.
Next: Since there was no standing army, a militia needed to be ready to fight for the country.
|