The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Commentary by Gary Kopycinski
Editor & Publisher
Park Forest, IL-(ENEWSPF)- Wildly liberal interpretations of the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution must end, forthwith. We must embrace a smart, conservative interpretation of this amendment if we truly cherish freedom.
The 2nd Amendment is very simple:
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.
This amendment is not a free-for-all, nor was it intended to be a free-for-all. The 2nd Amendment does not suggest that anyone can carry a gun anywhere, at any time. Nor was it intended to allow that.
A fraud on the American public.” That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum. (Politico[1])
The word you want to remember is Heller, as in District of Columbia v. Heller, and it’s recent. Very recent.
2nd Amendment Post-2008
In fact[2], “the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008 when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise.”
What did the Second Amendment mean to the Founders? Read a good history of the Revolutionary War — I strongly recommend Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life[3]
