is the second amendment an obsolete relic of another time?

We don’t need the Second Amendment anymore. Sure, it may have been useful at one time when settlers needed to hunt and protect themselves because there was no social order other than what they could establish. And many consider the pioneers to be colonizing invaders who used their arms to oppress and enslave.

Even if there were frontiersmen and remote outposts where defense, organized or otherwise, meant the people needed arms, surely, society has outgrown such primitive conditions today. We have the rule of law. We have the police. We have a military, including the National Guard, to replace the outdated militia. And who but extremist insurrectionists talk about “fighting tyranny,” as if they would have a chance against nukes and F-16s?

So, aside from legitimate uses like hunting and sport shooting, both of which can be accomplished under a system of gun safety laws “that still respect the Second Amendment,” why do average citizens need guns, especially “weapons of war”? Besides, the Founders, who were envisioning single-shot muskets that took a minute to load when they wrote the Bill of Rights, could never have conceived of the terrible firepower modern technology places in the hands of average people, and they never intended that anyway outside of “a well-regulated militia.”

Know Your Enemy

How am I doing on gun-grabber talking points? No, American Handgunner hasn’t suddenly gone soft on 2A. It’s just that we need to understand the arguments gun prohibitionists use to swindle the manipulable out of their rights. Let’s work our way back, starting with the lie that the Second Amendment was never meant to create an individual right.

First, it didn’t “create” any right. As the Supreme Court has recognized, “The very text … implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” As for the contention that it’s only a right of states to form militias, the language says “right of the people,” not “right of the states.”

Any number of quotes from the Founding Fathers, like this one from John Adams, who wrote, “Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion … in private self-defense,” attest to their understanding of what they wrote. Conversely, the antis can’t come up with even one citation from the time the Constitution was debated and ratified to support their oft-told lie that the Framers didn’t mean for the right to apply to “the governed.”

Next, let’s look at the contention that if they’d only known about modern weaponry, it would have scared them away from “giving” such power to individuals. Continental Congress delegate Tench Coxe’s assertion that “Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American” indicates they were well aware of the destructive power of arms in private hands.

A common rebuttal is they were also limited to quill pens and manual printing presses, but that First Amendment protections apply to radio, television, computers and the Internet, which they never envisioned. I prefer citing examples of developing firearms technology in the periods preceding and contemporaneous with the Founding era. Those included innovations like volley guns, first used in 1339, pepperbox revolvers (multiple-barrel handheld firearms based on a concept introduced in the 15th Century), and the Kalthoff 30-Shot Flintlock repeating firearm from 1659.

The Founders experienced firsthand a major technological innovation that yielded a range and accuracy advantage: long guns with rifled barrels, like Kentucky and Pennsylvania rifles, that outperformed British standard-issue Brown Bess smooth-bore muskets. Then there were the breech-loading Ferguson rifle, the Puckle gun, a crank-operated revolving piece with interchangeable, 11-round cylinders, patented about 80 years before ratification of the Constitution, the 1779 Girardoni air rifle that could fire about 20 rounds from a tubular magazine, and the Belton Repeating Flintlock from 1785.

Leaders of the time included not just politicians, statesmen, and warriors, but also learned naturalists, scientists, innovators and inventors. They knew that times were changing, as theirs were the revolutionary, educated minds bringing it about.

As for dismissing the need to fight tyranny, hasn’t despotism and mass destruction plagued every civilization that preceded ours? Isn’t it still commonplace throughout the globe? By what suspension of reality are we sheltered few immune from this? Are we certain, from our brief and privileged vantage point, that our familiar way of life will forever be the norm, when everything that has gone before us shows we are, instead, the extremely lucky beneficiaries of a rare and fortunate convergence of circumstances, and one that has only been preserved under the force of arms?

The country has never been more divided, with liberals (who now openly adopt Antifa terminology and call conservatives “fascists”) backing a foreign-born communist — who has called for banning guns — for New York City mayor. Still, take heart that they haven’t tried confiscations on a mass scale. It’s because they know they can’t without taking on great personal risks that only the insane wouldn’t fear. So, in that sense, the Second Amendment is working on a societal scale, just as it does against individual assailants, where the presence of arms can be enough of a deterrent to discourage aggression and avoid the violence prohibitionists blame guns for.