“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.”

The federal government does not have the power to deny any citizen his/her right to bear arms.  The federal government must also not be given the power to require registration of firearms as this is the first step toward providing a powerful government the opportunity to later confiscate weapons.

Affirmative Argument

The basic disagreement regarding the 2^nd Amendment is the result of the preamble, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary …”   This causes some to argue that the purpose of the 2^nd Amendment is to protect not an individual’s right but a state’s right.  They argue that it is the state that organizes a legal militia.   

With the exception of the 10^th Amendment which specifically identifies both state and individual rights, each of our ‘Bill of Rights’ speaks specifically to individual rights.  Therefore we must provide the broadest interpretation to the Right to Bear Arms.  The 2^nd Amendment must be interpreted as an individual right.  Until the Constitution is amended governments must not be allowed to impose restrictions on any individual’s right to bear arms. 

Too often gun control legislation is attempted with a desire to explain this amendment as either no longer necessary or to dismiss the importance of the 2^nd Amendment as merely important to protect hunters and other sportsmen.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Where it is true that the interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment as an individual right enables individuals to own machine guns or other rapid fire automatic weapons that were not anticipated by our founding fathers, the following is also true:  The original purpose of the 2^nd Amendment was to protect citizens against a government that might become too strong and attempt to deny its citizens the liberties it was formed to protect.  It has often been said that it is the 2^nd Amendment that protects all the other amendments and prevents the government from growing so strong that it could become a tyrant to its citizens.