What's a Militia?

For some reason, no one seems to understand what it means to have a well-regulated militia. The Second Amendment has, for some reason, one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in American history. It reads:

“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.”

Courtesy of FunnyJunk

Most people have taken to reducing this text to simply “the right to bear arms”, but the militia part is far and away more important in my mind. Whether or not I support guns for all, the amendment itself does not allow for it.

A thorough analysis of the text of the amendment itself makes it clear that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms only stems from the need for a regulated militia in order to protect the freedom of American citizens, which is no longer a reality of modern life.

But, I digress from the ramblings of an English pedant and turn towards our court case for the week: DC vs. Heller, argued in 2008 by the Roberts Court.

In this case, Dick Heller was a police officer in Washington DC who carried a gun on the job but was denied a permit to have a gun at his home. Heller, the man of the law that he undoubtedly was, sued the District of Columbia for violating his Second Amendment Rights to bear arms in the provisions of the DC Code that forbade licensing of handguns and required already licensed guns to be kept nonfunctional when in a home setting. That’s a lot of words – basically, he was bitter he couldn’t have a gun at home and decided his rights were being infringed upon.

The Roberts Court concluded that the ban in the DC Code was unconstitutional. They claimed that the first clause mentioning the militia is “prefatory”. I believe they made that word up in an attempt to trick us. The concurring argument asserts that to ban guns form the people and restrict them for actual law enforcement/military personnel could recreate the type of fear-striking government that the Framers must have been avoiding.

I’ve always loved a good John Paul Stevens dissent, and this one fits the bill: Stevens claimed in his opinion that “the most natural reading of the amendment is that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes but does not curtail the legislature’s power to regulate nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons.” These justices are wordy people, but an expert shortener – he’s saying that the Amendment applies to MILITIA.

To me, this makes the most sense. Whether or not I support the right to firearms for personal use is an issue I have yet to truly make sense of, but from a reading of the Second Amendment, I see no way in which we are guaranteed an all-encompassing right to guns, especially the automatic behemoths that are far above the threshold for self-defense.

I’m curious to what you think in the comments. Did the Court get it right? I’ve always been intrigued by people’s different (mis)interpretations of the wording of the Second Amendment. It’s definitely a toughie.