The Proud American Journal

The Second Amendment: Original Intent and Enduring Meaning

You know, there’s something that happens when you hold a copy of the Bill of Rights in your hands — really hold it, and read it slowly, word by word. You feel the weight of what those men were doing. They weren’t just writing laws. They were drawing a line. They were saying, in plain and permanent language, that there are certain things a free people will never surrender. And among those things — standing right there in the Second Amendment, just after freedom of speech and religion — is the right to keep and bear arms.It’s a simple sentence, really. Twenty-seven words. “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.”1 Twenty-seven words that have been debated, dissected, and disputed for more than two centuries. And yet, if you go back to where those words came from — back to the men who wrote them, back to the world they lived in, back to the history they carried in their bones — the meaning isn’t nearly as mysterious as some would have us believe.