The American Bill of Rights: 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.”
The American Bill of Rights, ratified on December 15, 1791, in response to the unease expressed that the American Constitution of September 17, 1787, did not protect the individual liberties of the American citizens. Furthermore, constructed to ensure that the government could not hold tyrannical power over an individual’s personal beliefs.
The Second Amendment exists because of the Founding Fathers well-founded fear of tyrannical governments. Many of them had prior experience of the dictatorship of the British crown and did not want that same oppression to take root in America. They knew that the best way to defend themselves against a powerful government that could wield all the power of the law over freedom and liberty, was to keep weapons. If weapons, kept and maintained, the citizens could defend American liberty by forming their own militias. Considering this reasoning, it is difficult to understand why those who acted on January 12, 2021, were imprisoned, even though the Bill of Rights, should have protected them legally.
The right to bear arms has widely been the topic of heated debate within America, with the increase of gun crime, school shootings, and various mass shootings. We can all agree that taking of innocent life is horrendous, but we must not forget that it is our fundamental right to bear arms, because it is one of the founding principles of this country, coupled with, it is one of the tenets that protect yours and your family’s liberties.
Furthermore, Alexander Hamilton, within the construct of the Federalist paper #29, first published in The Independent Journal on January 9, 1788, suggested:
“If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.”
He quite rightly states that people should be able to arm themselves according to the powers and strengths of the government. This stance, means that the average United States citizen, should be able to own any type of rifle that they so choose, including those incorrectly deemed assault rifles by the mass media.
