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Being an adult citizen, which is exactly what the founders meant, and is really not at all open to interpretation. In the parlance of the time, well-regulated

Being an adult citizen, which is exactly what the founders meant, and is really not at all open to interpretation. In the parlance of the time, well-regulated meant well-equipped, and militia meant every armed adult male. This is crystal-clear in the federalist papers, and various writings, passages, and speeches from the exact same people who wrote the damn thing.

andrewla 7y ago
The Federalist papers are not, as I recall, crystal clear on this issue (that is, what "well-regulated" means". If anything, they say the opposite. From "Concerning the Militia": "To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss" This pretty clearly carries the implication that being "well-regulated" is more than just well-equipped. It is, however, clear that the intention was to continue the policy of citizens bearing arms, even treating that as an implicit part of the culture of the time. Madison says, in "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared", as an offhand remark, "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, ...", and in comparison to Europe, it is expected that Americans can be trusted with guns: "Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
- tomschlick 7y ago
  Here is a decent list of quotes from founders: https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-explain-the-second-amendment-this-says-it-all https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-expl... Notably... “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778 “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788 I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” – George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788 “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776 “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
  - madhadron 7y ago
    Be careful with lists of quotes like this. Go back and examine the full context of the text and what the text was being written for. I have in many cases followed up on such quotes and found that the surrounding text made them mean something entirely different or sometimes even the opposite.
    - krapp 7y ago
      Case in point: when Ben Franklin argued "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.", he was actually arguing for the authority of the Federal government to tax the states in order to fund a frontier defense against Native American raids[0, 1], not making some general crypto-minarchist statement about the dangers of ceding personal liberty to the authority of governments. [0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be... [1]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - alfromspace 7y ago
        The context doesn't make what Franklin meant any different.
        krapp 7y ago
        What? The context shows that what Franklin meant is completely the opposite of what people claim. He wasn't warning against the dangers of giving up one's rights to the creeping authoritarianism of the state, he was complaining that people were giving up the "essential Liberty" provided by an effective Federal government for the "temporary safety" purchased by refusing to fund it. Or to quote from the NPR article, "(...) far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation."
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > This pretty clearly carries the implication that being "well-regulated" is more than just well-equipped. In that context, it seems that to the writer, "well-regulated" meant trained, likely continuous training kept up at somewhat regular intervals (in how to use their weapon, and how to care for it so that it is ready to use), and that they should keep their knowledge up ("evolutions") on more recent advances in weaponry so that they have some idea how to care and use those as well. > "...the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." Today, there are many people who are showing that they cannot be trusted with arms. They use them instead of reason, they use them for illegal purposes, they use them as toys, they don't take regular training to understand them, they - in short - don't act like militiamen should act. They certainly don't seemingly act "well-regulated". Are these the kind of citizens the Framers - and perhaps the Federalist papers - had in mind to keep and bear arms?
  - andrewla 7y ago
    So my understanding of it was that the framers were generally tepid about the idea of standing armies, especially standing armies managed by the federal government. They wanted instead the armies to consist of militias organized by the states, and the command structure to ultimately roll up to the Commander-in-Chief. The expectation was varied over who would arm the militias -- Congress, the states, or the people bringing their own weapons. To preserve the possibility of the last option, they wrote the second amendment so that when people went to join the militia, they would already have their own guns (and other armaments, like cannon, horses, etc.) that they could bring along. This involves a whole bevy of unstated assumptions about firearm ownership based on the experience fighting the British. So if I were to rephrase the amendment to remove the brevity, I think it would read something like this: "In order that the states may raise and maintain a militia that is well-organized and trained, people must own and be prepared to bear their own personal armament in service of that militia, and therefore Congress may not forbid people from owning arms and by doing so prevent the states from raising militias outside of Congress's authority." So I personally feel that this sentiment, while noble for the time, is outdated and no longer applicable, especially since the remnants of state militias are insignificant compared to the deployed power of the federal standing army, and we don't expect that to change. But it is what it is, and we have a process already for modifying the constitution when its dictates are no longer applicable, as we did with slavery, as we did with the voting age, as we did with income taxes. We should be using the power of amending the constitution to update it to reflect the reality of firearm ownership in the present time. I guess the one thing if you accept my interpretation of the amendment that might be open to interpretation is that the states could arguably have the power to regulate the right to keep and bear arms as they see fit; the debate was mostly federal vs. state rather than government vs. individual, even if in the end it is expressed as an individual right that enforces the state's right.

andrewla 7y ago

The Federalist papers are not, as I recall, crystal clear on this issue (that is, what "well-regulated" means". If anything, they say the opposite. From "Concerning the Militia": "To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss" This pretty clearly carries the implication that being "well-regulated" is more than just well-equipped. It is, however, clear that the intention was to continue the policy of citizens bearing arms, even treating that as an implicit part of the culture of the time. Madison says, in "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared", as an offhand remark, "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, ...", and in comparison to Europe, it is expected that Americans can be trusted with guns: "Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

tomschlick 7y ago
Here is a decent list of quotes from founders: https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-explain-the-second-amendment-this-says-it-all https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-founding-fathers-expl... Notably... “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778 “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788 I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” – George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788 “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776 “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
- madhadron 7y ago
  Be careful with lists of quotes like this. Go back and examine the full context of the text and what the text was being written for. I have in many cases followed up on such quotes and found that the surrounding text made them mean something entirely different or sometimes even the opposite.
  - krapp 7y ago
    Case in point: when Ben Franklin argued "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.", he was actually arguing for the authority of the Federal government to tax the states in order to fund a frontier defense against Native American raids[0, 1], not making some general crypto-minarchist statement about the dangers of ceding personal liberty to the authority of governments. [0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be... [1]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - alfromspace 7y ago
      The context doesn't make what Franklin meant any different.
      - krapp 7y ago
        What? The context shows that what Franklin meant is completely the opposite of what people claim. He wasn't warning against the dangers of giving up one's rights to the creeping authoritarianism of the state, he was complaining that people were giving up the "essential Liberty" provided by an effective Federal government for the "temporary safety" purchased by refusing to fund it. Or to quote from the NPR article, "(...) far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation."
cr0sh 7y ago
> This pretty clearly carries the implication that being "well-regulated" is more than just well-equipped. In that context, it seems that to the writer, "well-regulated" meant trained, likely continuous training kept up at somewhat regular intervals (in how to use their weapon, and how to care for it so that it is ready to use), and that they should keep their knowledge up ("evolutions") on more recent advances in weaponry so that they have some idea how to care and use those as well. > "...the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." Today, there are many people who are showing that they cannot be trusted with arms. They use them instead of reason, they use them for illegal purposes, they use them as toys, they don't take regular training to understand them, they - in short - don't act like militiamen should act. They certainly don't seemingly act "well-regulated". Are these the kind of citizens the Framers - and perhaps the Federalist papers - had in mind to keep and bear arms?
- andrewla 7y ago
  So my understanding of it was that the framers were generally tepid about the idea of standing armies, especially standing armies managed by the federal government. They wanted instead the armies to consist of militias organized by the states, and the command structure to ultimately roll up to the Commander-in-Chief. The expectation was varied over who would arm the militias -- Congress, the states, or the people bringing their own weapons. To preserve the possibility of the last option, they wrote the second amendment so that when people went to join the militia, they would already have their own guns (and other armaments, like cannon, horses, etc.) that they could bring along. This involves a whole bevy of unstated assumptions about firearm ownership based on the experience fighting the British. So if I were to rephrase the amendment to remove the brevity, I think it would read something like this: "In order that the states may raise and maintain a militia that is well-organized and trained, people must own and be prepared to bear their own personal armament in service of that militia, and therefore Congress may not forbid people from owning arms and by doing so prevent the states from raising militias outside of Congress's authority." So I personally feel that this sentiment, while noble for the time, is outdated and no longer applicable, especially since the remnants of state militias are insignificant compared to the deployed power of the federal standing army, and we don't expect that to change. But it is what it is, and we have a process already for modifying the constitution when its dictates are no longer applicable, as we did with slavery, as we did with the voting age, as we did with income taxes. We should be using the power of amending the constitution to update it to reflect the reality of firearm ownership in the present time. I guess the one thing if you accept my interpretation of the amendment that might be open to interpretation is that the states could arguably have the power to regulate the right to keep and bear arms as they see fit; the debate was mostly federal vs. state rather than government vs. individual, even if in the end it is expressed as an individual right that enforces the state's right.