Necessary to the Security of a Free State
Often it seems as if people must be viewing the Second Amendment with blinders on. Some read about "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" and infer that there is no individual right to keep and bear arms. Others read that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and conclude that all gun laws are unconstitutional. All too often, these various constructions of the Second Amendment seem to lose sight of the objective - the security of a free State.
The term "free State" refers to free government or self-government. It is to be contrasted with a monarchial State, which is governed by an individual, or an oligarchical State, which is governed by a small group. A free State is a body of people who govern themselves.
A free State has many requirements for its security. It requires that government powers be divided amongst separate branches of government. It requires a written Constitution with a Bill of Rights. And it requires a government elected, by the people, for limited terms. The resulting form of government, a Constituted Republic, is intended to ensure that the government and the people remain inseparable.
A free State requires that the military also remain inseparable from the people. In the Framers' day, it was believed that the proper defense of a free State was the people themselves, trained to arms. Today the military power is more distinct from the people, but if it becomes too distinct, then free government is threatened.
|
Nothing then, according to these principles, ought to be more guarded against in a free state, than making the military power, when such a one is necessary to be kept on foot, a body too distinct from the people - Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765)
|
The people of a free State have a collective right to control their own government and military. And if they should ever lose this control, they have a right to regain it. Of course, in a Constituted Republic, the people can change government by electing different representatives and by amending their Constitution. But if all else fails, the people have a right, and a duty, to use force to defend their liberty.
|
when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. - Declaration of Independence
|
In the sense that the Second Amendment is regarding the right to revolution, it is regarding a collective right and not an individual right. For an individual to use violence in an attempt to make government conform to his individual will is not revolution, it is terrorism. And yet the collective right to revolution requires the individual right to keep and bear arms, such that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right
as an aspect of the collective right.
The people of a free State must be armed so that they might, as a last resort, rise up as one and forcibly take control of their own government. However, the United States is too big to fit this model of a free State. For the people of the US to rise up as one and take control of US government would not usher in a free State, it would usher in a monarchy or oligarchy.
|
That the obvious tendency, and inevitable result, of a consolidation of the states into one sovereignty, would be to transform the republican system of the United States into a monarchy, is a point which seems to have been sufficiently decided by the general sentiment of America. - Madison, Response to Virginia Resolution (1799)
|
An area as vast as the United States has additional requirements for the security of free government. It requires that government powers be divided between State and Federal governments. And whereas the States have broad and general powers, the Federal government must be limited to enumerated powers. The US Constitution delegates federal powers which include the power to coin money, to establish Post Offices, to declare war, and to provide for the militia. The US Constitution specifies that Congress shall have power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, reserving to each individual State the power to train the militia and appoint officers. Just as the militia of a free State must remain inseparable from the people, so must the militia of the US remain inseparable from the States.
|
What reasonable cause of apprehension can be inferred from a power in the Union to prescribe regulations for the militia and to command its services when necessary, while the particular States are to have the sole and exclusive apportionment of the officers? If it were possible seriously to indulge a jealousy of the militia upon any conceivable establishment under the federal government, the circumstance of the officers being in the appointment of the States ought at once to extinguish it. There can be no doubt that this circumstance will always secure to them a preponderating influence over the militia. - Federalist Paper #29
|
The Second Amendment seems most easily construed to mean that the Citizens of each State have a right to keep and bear arms individually because they have a right to keep and bear arms collectively. A free State might have gun laws, such as laws regarding carrying concealed weapons or laws prohibiting violent felons, without violating these Second Amendment principles. But the general population of a free State must have the right to keep arms and to rise up and bear them in defense of their free government.
