2nd Amendment question?

Question

The second amendment states that "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."

Is this saying that only MILITIA are able to bear arms or the PEOPLE (any regular citizen) can? I'm confused because militia ARE citizens/the people....
Basically--according to this second amendment--who can keep and bear arms? The people or the militia?

Answer 1

It is telling you that the people have the right to have guns, and that this is important for the security of each state.

Militia is used as a description of the people with arms. During the time this was written, the US didn't have a military - the people with weapons were the military defending the country. So that is the spirit that the 2nd amendment is written. And in a (God forbid) huge war that all but destroys our military, the people with weapons - citizens - are going to be the last and final line of defense. It is giving them the right to have and bear arms so that this country will always be protected by someone. Even if it is a bunch of vigilantes. It will also serve as the people never being taken over by the military, like some other countries have been. People in those countries couldn't fight because they didn't have the right to have guns. In this country, in order for the military to make a viable attempt to take over the country, someone would have to propose to abolish the 2nd amendment, and then Congress would have to agree with it. That is very unlikely to happen.

Answer 2

All of the amendments of the BoR prevent the federal (and now state) govt from doing something. They specifically protect individuals.
And individual has two protections.
The first is the "right" to keep arms. The reason for this is so in the event of an emergency, individual citizens can lend or use their guns in the militia. Designed because article 1 section 8 allows the feds to arm the militia, it also allowed them to disarm the militia, the 2A therefore protected the militia through individuals.

The second is the "right" to bear arms. An individual can only bear arms in this sense in the militia. This part was designed to prevent the feds deciding that people could not be militia members and effectively reducing the militia to nothing.
This can be seen in the arguments in congress during the ratification process. They wanted a religiously scrupulous part in the amendment that would prevent those religiously scrupulous from having to bear arms.
They got rid of it because they claimed the govt would declare all people religiously scrupulous and this would make this part of the clause useless.

So, when people say the 2A protects the militia only, they are wrong, that was the aim, but to do so, they protected the individuals.

However, the "right" is more limited than many people will say.
In the recent DC case those fighting against DC claimed and the judges supported this, that the term bear means all senses, ie carry a weapon.
However many federal judges are biased, and the DC lawyers made a bad case with more illogical arguments that those against the DC gun ban.
If bearing arms were all types of bearing, then carry and conceal laws would be illegal, even though the supreme court has always claimed carry and conceal is not protected.

Answer 3

It means that any (law-abiding) citizen can bear arms. The confusion comes from trying to see this from our modern day perspective. In America c.1788 the state did not "maintain" a militia in the same way we have a national gurard today. Local communities formed militias composed of men of the town--and "being necessary" was not just a phrase. In frontier areas, for example, a commmunity might be hours, or days away from help. And the "militia" and the "citizenry" were to all intents and puroposes interchangeable--the men of a community were the militia and vice versa.

Today, the issue of "militia" is basically irrelevant. But the ammendment stands--any law-abiding citizen has the right to bear arms. One thing that all the political rhetoric often obscures is that regulation is allowed--and the gist of court decisions is that such regulation is constitutional as long as it does not have the effect of barring a citizen from owning a personal weapon.

Answer 4

No, it says we need a well-regulated militia to remain free, and that the rights of the people to also be armed.

Answer 5

Simple answer, both.

Answer 6

Well, both actually