The Second Amendment's 221th Anniversary

Amendment II to the United States Constitution, proposed 25 September 1789 along with the other nine Amendments that compose the Bill of Rights, was ratified on 15 December 1791. Thus, today is the 211th anniversary of the American constitutional right to bear arms. Here is the exact text 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." Those favoring a severe restriction of the Second Amendment right to bear arms instantly pounce on the single word "Militia to support their view that arms were intended for citizen armies and not for individuals. Those favoring a universal citizen right to bear arms argue that the word Militia is not controlling but merely one of the examples that makes the universal right to bear arms necessary. To give historical perspective -- the English common law right, indeed obligation, for all freemen to possess arms in order to assist in the keeping of the king's peace is clear from the 12th century Assise of Arms by Henry II. That is, all freemen were required to show that they had an arm available in their home. That right began to be drastically curtailed in the 19th century when professional police forces were introduced in England. And today, except for hunting guns, it is extremely difficult for a British citizen to possess a gun. In fact, one of the earliest British attempts to curtail the citizen right to bear arms was directed at the American colonies. In the 1760s, American colonial militia were largely individual colonists without training or company formation. The problem was that some of these men were loyal to the English king and the others called Patriots, fearful that the Loyalists might turn on them, seized their arms and began building up Patriot-controlled arsenals, so that only Patriots possessed arms. The British parliament, fearful of an American revolt, in turn passed an embargo against any shipment of guns, parts or ammunition to America. After the Revolution, many state constitutions included a right to bear arms. When the Constitution was being drafted, the right to bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights and written discussion shows that the reasons included personal protection, as well as militia-type needs. But, overriding was the idea that America should not be held hostage to an all-powerful federal government that might actually turn on the states and suppress their rights -- here we see the purely American idea that the balance of power is tripartite...armed citizens, military power and political government. Thus the citizen right to bear arms. So, dear readers, we will again hear the arguments pro and con. But in all of this, it is wise to remember that armed Americans are in a sense the protectors of their own Bill of Rights and of their freedom from governmental tyranny. The American citizen, wary of the federal government's power, is obviously wary of that same federal government when it attacks the Second Amendment that gives American citizens their best defense against the federal government.