The Second Amendment does NOT protect private gun ownership

…yes, if you read the HP you’ve seen that title before. For our third post in the series on the Bill of Rights, we’re reaching back to one of the first posts we put up in the infancy of the site. It was short—we used to be like that! The topic is still unfortunately pertinent today. We will do a little updating as we go along:

Let’s go out on a limb here to state the obvious.

How does it read? “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.”

A well-regulated Militia. Not a well-armed citizen.

We have to agree with ourselves here. But before we can analyze, we have to really understand. The amendment is written in that cart-before-the-horse way that plagued 18th-century writing in English. If you break it down, it says “Since the militia is necessary to national security in a free state, the government cannot forbid the public to keep and bear arms.”

This is such a time machine window into the state of the early U.S. We had no standing army. We had only volunteer state militia for our national defense. The key words are “free state”: rather than create a standing army, which was only ever used in Europe to oppress the people and defend the monarch’s absolute power, the U.S. wants to continue to rely on volunteer militia.

But what if the federal government tries to get around this protection of the people by forbidding them to own guns? That way, they can’t form militia, and the federal government could create an army after all, arm it itself, and be tyrannical.

The answer is to forbid the federal government from outlawing private gun ownership. As we said back then…

This Amendment is clearly meant to protect the right of the citizen to own a gun to use in military service. You keep your arms so that you can serve in the militia. This was written when the main form of defense was state and local militias, for which you needed your own gun.

Now, we’re not a strict-interpretation-of-the-Constitution people here at the HP. We believe the Constitution is flexible and can be read in new ways. But this Amendment seems so clearly to be about protecting a volunteer military—to be about military service—that to extend it to people who want to be able to carry guns into a bar or a supermarket, or keep them in their glovebox, is clearly untenable.

That is, the Second Amendment has no meaning outside of military service. It’s ironic that most strong supporters of expanding carry laws and gun ownership are often very anti-military (official U.S. military, that is). They want guns to protect them from an attack by the U.S. armed forces that they feel is imminent.

 The Second Amendment does NOT encourage or demand that average citizens keep guns in their homes for any reason. It does not mention hunting. It does not mention personal defense. It is strictly about maintaining a national army.

There are times when we wish the Founders had been more specific, but this is not one of them. The Second Amendment is clearly about military service. It cannot be read loosely to apply to anything else—a new constitutional amendment would be necessary to do that. Until that new amendment is ratified, we will continue to honor the Second Amendment as it is written.

Next time: another military amendment