The 2nd Amendment: “Individual Right Only” Theory is Wrong
The theory that “the individual right” to personal self-defense lies at the heart of the Second Amendment is plainly wrong.
This post is the beginning of a very intense study into the 2nd Amendment from Dr. Edwin Vieira’s site, Constitutional Militia. I concur with his well researched and thought out conclusion. It is obvious to me that the RIGHT and the MILITIA are inextricably woven together within the 2nd amendment and without ONE or the OTHER the reason for it which is NECESSARY to the SECUTITY of a FREE STATE, becomes mute. Let’s take a close look at what he reveals to us. I am sending this out as a post because I feel it is a very important topic that we all should be concerned with. C.L.
No matter how many jurists and intellectuals may embrace it, the theory that “the individual right” to personal self-defense lies at the heart of the Second Amendment is plainly wrong. This is not to say that the Amendment, correctly construed, does not effectively ensure for almost all individuals a right of personal self-defense with firearms. It does, but (in most cases) with every kind of firearm that is in any way suitable for any type of Militia service, not just handguns kept in one’s home. Moreover, it guarantees for almost all individuals various rights to employ firearms for purposes far beyond the narrow confines of their own personal self-defense at home.
Each individual enjoys “the right * * * to keep and bear [his own] Arms”,[1] not simply so that he can defend himself, but so that all individuals can act in concert in “well regulated Militia” to preserve their communities as “free State[s]”.[2] Thus, nothing could be more erroneous—and even destructive of the purpose of the Second Amendment as well as the Militia Clauses of the original Constitution—than the notions that not only does “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” embrace an “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation”, “having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia”, but also individual self-defense is “the central component of the right itself”.[3]
Thus, at least insofar as it is made to rest upon the right of personal self-defense, the supposed “individual right” to possess firearms is the spawn of confusion. Worse yet, it is the source of delusion as to what actually needs to be done to enforce the Second Amendment. For, notwithstanding that all too many naive patriots believe it to be correct, and even though it may provide some protection for “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” in isolated instances, at base the notion that the Amendment primarily concerns itself with only an “individual right” is part and parcel of the strategy America’s enemies are employing in order so to befuddle “the people” that they will not seek to organize themselves in the one and only way the Constitution itself tells them is “necessary to the security of a free State”.
To read the rest of the story, and to interact with Dr. Vieira’s well put together and thought out article follow this link. It is so full of obvious truth and long enough that I really can’t mirror it in it’s totality here. READ it and STUDY it and you will come to the same conclusion that I have been saying for a long time. C.L.
CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA
I suppose one can be lucky to have been born in SC, a place where hard fighting individualism lives.
It was not scary to be around all kinds of weaponry.
They weren't considered WEAPONS for one thing. They were tools, like a shovel or a screwdriver.
They had specific functions, and the people using them required no government to instruct us.
The self-policing nature of it was stricter anyway; good neighbors made sure no idiots were allowed to mess with anyone's TOOLS.
If one's neighbor needed to borrow a TOOL, it was a given that they already knew how to use and maintain the TOOL and return it as expected.
Very interesting, the recruitment of home guards could be assembled, if there was a threat to security.