The Second Amendment

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

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.


We need to provide some context or at least definitions for people to understand the second amendment apparently, though how it isn't simple enough is beyond me.

A "Militia" is a group of fighting persons able to be called into action by a leader that may or may not be a State or County led force.

One example of a militia being called upon by the County would be a "posse" being deputized upon arrival to the call of a County Sheriff.

Such militia's do not typically provide arms to the people who form the militia as the budget was or is not adequate for doing so.  Thus, the individual citizens thus responding were expected to bring arms of their own belonging. 

Thus, the Second Amendment made sure that all citizens have the right to keep and bear arms of their own.  "Keep" means to have and own.  "Bear", in this case, means to use, or to have upon their person.

"Shall not be infringed".  This is so obvious one shouldn't need any clarification.  It means don't mess with this law.  Pretty simple actually.

It's very important to note that the wording of the Second amendment quoted above is that which was ratified by the states.  Without State ratification, anything Congress on it's own would have done would have not had the same weight or bearing as state ratification.

This means essentially, that these are the words as approved and put into action by the people, not just those who were elected.

The power to do this and any power to change this must come from the States, NOT the federal government.