2nd Amendment Re-interpretation

This is a good video on its own. But I'm particularly interested because I had never heard this interpretation of the 2nd Amendnment before.

"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."

Penn (of Penn and Teller) reads it like this:

"Since a well regulated militia (which, by definition, poses a threat to the liberty of citizens, should it be used against them) is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed (just in case they need to defend themselves from such governmental use of the militia against them.)"

This is pretty good.

Penn's interpretation disarms anti-gunners (and bureaucrats) of their favorite and persistent objection. He grants that the word "militia", means what the anti-gunners say it means...but turns it on its head...using that very meaning as the reason the Founders were so adamant to insure that Citizens were armed.

He points out that America had just fought a bloody and desperate war against a "well-regulated militia" set upon them, by their own government. We know it as the British Army. And that experience informed their inclusion of the Right To Keep and Bear Arms in the Bill of Rights.

He claims The Founders were particular and precise in their wording, making it clear that it was to defend against an out of control government militia that The People must be armed. For the Founders, the Second Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, was focused on a single objective: the Preservation of liberty.

And once seen in that light, it really makes sense. It clarifies the sentence, and renders it no longer "ambiguous" as some have claimed.

If we wrote it today, we might say:

"Because we have to have an army, citizens need to have the weapons necessary to defend themselves against it, in case it goes bad."

Maybe this interpretation has been debated by Constitutional scholars for 150 years...perhaps there are a lot of reasons and opinions why this can't be the meaning.

But it's new to me. And it seems perfectly logical and reasonable.




The Gunslinger