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.
Why did The Founding Fathers include the second amendment?
To protect self-government. To give the United States of America, one of the
boldest experiments in the history of the world, a chance to exist in a world
that decried its very existence. And endure, the United States did, partially
because of those arms. They served their purpose from the country’s revolution
to its civil war.
The world has changed. First, technology has rendered the second
amendment obsolete; the United States government has little trouble quelling
its citizens’ armed efforts with superior weaponry. Second, and more
importantly, self-government has become a habit in the United States, even if
it remains undervalued by many of its citizens.
For these reasons, arms in the hands of the people no longer
secure liberty; they merely escalate tensions, provoking violence and anger and
fear.
We must now embrace alternate methods, those employed by Mandela
and Gandhi and Menchú and King. We must meet violence with peace, anger with
joy, fear with love. We must move to eradicate arms in the hands of the people,
lest they aid in the destruction of the very ideal the second amendment was
meant to protect.
