What about the 2nd Amendment?

After every mass shooting, there are screams for more laws controlling guns. Are guns the problem? Or, is it the people who carry them? What would the founding fathers say? Why did they write the 2nd amendment and what does it really mean?

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of thepeople to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

United States Constitution 

In reality, the founding fathers had very little concern for the modern gun control debate. Both sides of the modern debate claim that they know the founding fathers would have thought. Let's examine that premise to see if we can determine what they really intended. When reading the debates that lead up to writing the Constitution, the real reason leaps off the pages. Alexander Hamilton called a well regulated militia the "most natural defense of a free country".The Federalists agreed that a citizen's militia was the bulwark of a free people.

The primary justification for the 2nd amendment was to prevent the government from having  a standing army with professional soldiers. Our founders believed that a standing army would be a threat to freedom because a corrupt government could order the army to attack civilians who would be unarmed and unable to defend themselves. The citizens would lose their freedom because they could not fight back. The choice was simple: a standing army or a free nation.

The founding fathers were not against individuals bearing arms. That just wasn't of concern to them. The idea of a militia was all important. They wanted every citizen to be in the militia, and they wanted everyone in the militia to be armed. If anyone was prevented from being part of the militia, they would not want them to be armed. For many years black men and ntive americans were prevented from being in the militia. Prior to the landmark 2008 decision (District of Columbia vs. Heller) courts had ruled that the right to bear arms was limited to those in the militia. 18th century Americans tolerated this interpretation because it gave them control over Blacks and Native Americans.

Today, anyone who wishes for a return to an original meaning of the 2nd amendment - where no one was a professional soldier, and everyone was required to be part of the militia - would find themselves very far from the modern political mainstream. The modern focus of the courts has been to emphasize the second part of the amendment allowing all citizens to bear arms rather than only those in a militia. America's standing army is now the most powerful in the world. And, even the National Guard is a far cry from being a citizens militia because it is certainly not free from government control. 

Americans have passed many strict laws regarding who may or may not bear arms. They have been eager to disarm blacks and other minorities while hesitant to disarm whites. Yet most of the mass shootings have be perpetrated by whites. 18th century militias were unstable and unpredicatable. American gun violence in modern times as been every bit as unstable and unpredictable, and given the improvement to weaponry, far more fatal. America now has a degree of gun violence that is unrivaled by any other country.

The founding fathers could not possibly have forseen the level of today's carnage. At its best the 2nd amendment was a commitment by citizens to participate in their own freedom and keep the government's military power under control. At its worst, it was a way for whites to maintain their social domination over the minorities. In today's America, the racial politics of the `18th century still abound. The concept of citizen participation against government power is nowhere to be found.