During the Los Angeles riots, hundreds of law-abiding citizens were able to take up arms against lawless mobs to defend themselves, their families, their homes, and their businesses. They did the job the police simply could not do. Lives were saved. Robberies were prevented. Homes and businesses were defended and left intact all thanks to our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
But despite the lessons of the L.A. riots, despite the fact that millions of Americans use firearms every year to prevent violent crime, and despite the clear intent of our Founding Fathers, there are those in America who believe you do not have the right to own a gun.
A common claim of the anti-gun lobby is that the Founding Fathers never meant that INDIVIDUALS should be armed; they only intended for the Second Amendment to apply to a militia, such as the National Guard.
These self proclaimed interpreters of the Constitution also ignore the Second Amendment's specific reference to "the right of the PEOPLE." The fact that the "rights of the PEOPLE" appears in the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments as well and that the courts have ruled repeatedly that these rights belong to INDIVIDUALS matters little to them. They retreat to their standard charge that the Founding Fathers never intended for the PEOPLE to have the right to keep and bear arms.
Even casual reading of our Founding Father's works would prove these foes of the Second Amendment wrong. Volumes upon volumes of articles, pamphlets, speeches, and documents that laid the foundation for the Bill of Rights clearly define the founder's purpose, including what they intended with the Second Amendment.
The Militia of the U.S. is defined under federal law to include all able-bodied males of age and some other males and females (10 U.S.C. *311; 32 U.S.C. *313), with the Guard established as only it's "organized" element. The Guard however is subject to absolute federal control (Supreme Court, Peprich v. Dept. of Defense, 1990) and thus is not the militia envisioned by the Framers.
It is obvious on the face of it that the 2nd confers an individual right. We just need the Supremes to affirm that individual right so the Left, the Socialists, the media and the government will quit being able to act on the lie that it doesn’t.