The Second Amendment Is Not About Hunting
You know it. I know it. The unspoken truth is the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is about citizens resisting and overcoming tyranny. A common law and natural law right considered for 200 years as an inalienable right. Speaking plainly, the 2nd is our bulwark against government which becomes despotic.
Armed free citizens are the final bulwark against tyranny by local, state or federal government.
When the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights committed our people to founding a new Nation guns were natural and necessary. For putting food on the table and, wait for it, personal defense against hostilities.
Armed citizens have a long history of taking action to correct despotic governments. Feudal economies faded away due in no small part to enough peasants acquiring arms. And the will to use them.
Federalist 46. James Madison, known as the author of most of the Bill of Rights said of arms and the common man ...
(excerpt) The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. (end excerpt)
Note Madison addressed Federalist 46 to the citizens of the state of New York. Whose Governor even now is posturing to further reduce citizen rights clearly illumined by the author of the Second Amendment, James Madison.
The Second Amendment exists for the citizen. For whatever lawful purpose the citizen deems. Personal safety, hunting, and even unto "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."
Our Founders secured for us this Right at the risk of their lives, and most certainly their comforts, property, honor and families.
The Second Amendment stands as the final say against government grown unbearably despotic. It is not about hunting.
Go here for perhaps the best exposition on the Second you will read.
Michael Geer welcomes comments at geer.michael@gmail.com. He is an author and publisher www.priceriverpublishing.weebly.com http://www.aintnotruthlikeit.com/index.html