What would Benjamin have done?
Jun 16, 2009 iThoughts
The Second amendment reads, “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.” To understand the amendment legal scholars look to the intent of the framers. Some people who advocate gun control say that the framers could not have imagined the evolution of guns. If they knew that automatic guns and “Saturday night specials” would eventually be readily obtainable, the framers would have qualified the right to bear arms to not include these guns that are often used in violent crimes.
So I decided to imagine what the amendment would read if indeed an AK-47 was available to our founding fathers. Would such weapons be excluded from the “right” to bear arms?
Our nation was born after a long and bloody fight with a well armed and well trained English army. Legal scholars agree that part of the intent behind the Second Amendment was to have an armed citizenry in case the federal army needed re-enforcements. Politically correct or not, we are a country of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, Starship Troopers and giant space bugs. I think that this NOT-AFRAID-AND-WON’T-BACK-DOWN attitude has served us well on the world stage.
I believe that our founding fathers would have embraced the Uzi. An America armed with automatic guns would have ended the Revolutionary War much sooner with fewer casualties (assuming the English were oblivious to the existence of the Uzi). However the subsequent Civil War would have been more problematic.
Tags: deborah rheuban, funny, gun control, politically incorrect, the constitution, the second amendment