This is the eighth entry in my Antistatism Series.
The Second Amendment to the United States’ Constitution was meant to strengthen a check on the power of any Federal army: the state militias. The Founding Fathers were prudently wary of standing armies, especially large ones kept in time of peace. Such armies were the concrete means by which tyrannical Federal plans could be actualized in force. The state militias offered the possibility of resistance, but only if they were maintained at readiness.
The Second Amendment is merely the most prominent of several interrelated constitutional checks on the Federal government’s power to raise and maintain a fighting force, and is not the only one concerned with the militia.
- Article I, Section 8 grants Congress these powers:
- To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
- To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
- To provide and maintain a navy;
- To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
- To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
- To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
- Article II, Section 2
- Grants that the President of the United States is to be commander in chief of the militia of the several states, but only while the militia is on duty in the actual service of the United States.
- The Second Amendment states: “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.”
- The Third Amendment states: “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
To be fully understood, the Second Amendment must be seen in the context of all of the above Constitutional provisions, as well as in its larger historical context. I will not here provide the full historical context of the Second Amendment. What I will do instead is break the text down into sections, explicating each from the perspective of that context.
Continue reading The Radical Meaning of the Second Amendment