That the people have a right to keep and bear arms

Posted by hank, Tue Mar 18 22:28:00 UTC 2008

So, there I was, wondering what the Founding Fathers of these united States were thinking when they scrawled the 2nd amendment into the paper, wording it so ambiguously (at least in today’s grammar). Maybe they wrote it down in another form somewhere else… Maybe at the Virginia Convention of June 27, 1788! Keep in mind that these were simply proposed amendments, so one could feasibly argue that they later decided that people shouldn’t have guns, but they should word it in Latin Grammar so it’s really confusing…

From page 221 of my Anti-Federalist Papers:

17th. That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit. And that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

This is from the guys who fought for the Bill of Rights. If it wasn’t for these guys, we wouldn’t have many of the other freedoms we enjoy, like the following: