DaButt
Tuesday 12th January 2016 4:35pm
14,722 posts
Quote: playfull @ 12th January 2016, 4:05 PM GMT
I just feel that the founding fathers intended one thing and it has now been usurped into another. Do you feel that a well armed Militia is still essential to the security of a free state?
The amendment is rather short on words, but the founders left little doubt about their intention. Back in the days when there really wasn't much of an organized, professional military, it was clear that they wanted to ensure that Americans could always rise up to fight a hostile attacker, both foreign and domestic. As for the latter:
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason
Co-author of the Second Amendment
during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ..."
Richard Henry Lee
writing in Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Letter XVIII, May, 1788.
"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; ..."
Samuel Adams
quoted in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, August 20, 1789, "Propositions submitted to the Convention of this State"
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
Richard Henry Lee
American Statesman, 1788
"The great object is that every man be armed." and "Everyone who is able may have a gun."
Patrick Henry
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
Patrick Henry
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that ... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; ... "
Thomas Jefferson
letter to Justice John Cartwright, June 5, 1824.