ARMS: See what the founders said

This letter is in response to Mr. Gary Edwards’ comments entitled, “Check must be required,” published Jan. 23. Your statement that “the Constitution’s Second Amendment requires that gun owners belong to a well regulated militia” could not be more wrong.

If you read the personal writings of our founders on the subject of personal arms, or read widely circulated writings of the period, such as The Federalist Papers, Common Sense and many others, the common people were considered the militia.

Here is a good example for you from 1776, written by George Mason as part of the Virginia Declaration of Rights:

“Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.”

Could it be any clearer than that?

If “....the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” as stated in the 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the individual right to possess firearms, then by your reasoning, the phrases, “the right of the people” or “of the people” as used in the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th amendments, do not represent the individual rights of citizens when it comes to free speech, assembly, religion, search and seizure, non-enumerated rights, or states rights.

It either means what it means for all, or for none.

J.D. GAINES

Coeur d’Alene