So often we hear people, particularly politicians, declare they are supporters of the Second Amendment. A more proper characterization of what most of them support is a bastardized interpretation of the Second Amendment that completely ignores the history and language of a relatively simple sentence: “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.” That language was not intended to prevent the government from making reasonable regulations that restricted (or even forbid, in some cases) private ownership of firearms.

To read the Second Amendment as a guarantee of the unrestricted personal right to own firearms, wholly untethered to security of the state or membership in a state militia is to ignore the provision’s self-contained explanation for the right created. It is important to remember that militias were creatures of state government, and the Founding Fathers feared the accumulation of power in a central government. So, through the Second Amendment, they ensured the central government could not disarm the militias and that state militias would operate as a bulwark against a tyrannical central government. (How’s that working out?)