Why the Second Amendment exists

We were discussing a meme on Facebook about the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

A friend of mine on Facebook just said,

But most people that post about keeping their weapons also forget the first line of the amendment's text. What regulated militia do they belong to?

I responded and reminded him that the Second Amendment says a bit more than just that one piece.

He responded with the following.

"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." Technically a single line for the whole thing, and in context of the era it was written following the revolution and founding of a new nation a reasonable position to take . But I would say that not all amendments to the constitution have been a good idea or stood the test of time.

My response

What was that you just said? "in the context of the era."

Now, let's expand on your extremely narrow description of the context.

The Constitution was written by a group of men who (except for one...Alexander Hamilton) were hell bent on making a new charter for the nation that extremely limited the power of the federal government.

The previous "constitution" (Articles of Confederation) was written on that same premise, but it so limited the federal government as to make it too weak. That is why our current Constitution was created. They realized the first attempt needed some refinement.

So, they refined it keeping the fed the weakest. They expressly defined powers and limitations on all 3 branches. They set it up so that each branch would check and balance the other two. The idea was to make sure no single branch became more powerful than the other two.

There was a huge debate over whether the Bill of Rights was even necessary. Some framers felt it was unnecessary because in their view they made the federal government so weak that it could never infringe upon the rights of the citizens. (Man were they wrong!)

Others felt it was necessary just as an extra safeguard to ensure that the power remained with the people and not the government.

Now, if you further dig into the "context of the era" many of our founding fathers have written published articles and letters that we can examine. Many of these writings, especially The Federalist papers, explicitly spell out the feelings of our founding fathers on several topics.

The Second Amendment may be a bit vague, but their other writings are crystal effin clear on the subject. They wanted to ensure the right to bear arms...

• not just for hunting
• not just for the "shits and giggles" of it

...but to ensure that the people could rise up and rebel against a government that might one day become too big for its britches. Many of them had written that they felt it was the DUTY of he citizenry to rebel against an overbearing USA government. Not just their right, but THEIR DUTY.

Now, you will inevitably say that the US military is too strong for some civilians with AR-15's and you would be right. However, you would also be overlooking the fact that the US military itself (including the National Guard and reserves) would also splinter and fracture and that large chunks would undoubtedly side with, train, support and fight with said rebellion. This little tidbit of common sense negates the ridiculous leftist argument that the AR-15 armed civilians would get slaughtered.