“A well regulated Milita being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” The second amendment in the Bill of Rights.

Over the years fierce debate has raged concerning the founding fathers’ intent and purpose in including the amendment in the Constitution.

Many believe that the amendment was included with strictly a collective purpose in mind (specifically the right of a militia composed of private citizens), yet still others believe that the right is both collective and individual (meaning both the right of privately organized militas the right of the people). However, it is evident that in writing the bill the founding fathers intended the right to keep a bear arms a citizen’s right.

Stephen Halbrook, a leading scholar on the second amendment, commented on how history and philosophy played an important roll in the drafting of the second amendment in his book That Every Man be Armed.

“The two categorical imperatives of the second amendment: that a milita of the body of people is necessary to guarantee a free state and that all of the people all of the time (not just when called for organized milita duty) have the right to keep arms; derive from the classical philosophical texts concerning the experiences of ancient Greece and Rome and seventeenth-century England.”

Early philosophers have commented on the right to keep and bear arms in the civilizations of past.

“The whole constitutional set-up is intended to be neither democracy or oligarchy but mid-way between the two… the members of which are those who bear arms,” wrote the Greek philosopher, Aristotle.

The form of government that we were given by our founding fathers is not a true democracy. We have a republic, in which we represent democratic characteristics by electing officials, who in turn make decisions and laws for the people.

The founding fathers knew that our form of government worked perfectly most of the time, more so than other forms. However, they also knew that the entire system and fundamental structure possessed the potential to quickly crumble should self-serving and unreliable leaders get in power.

The Declaration of Independence clearly states that the founding fathers believed that humans were born with certain unalienable rights (i.e. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). It also states that when a government becomes destructive and no longer protects those rights, but instead inhibits them, it is the right of the governed (the people) to abolish the old government and establish a new one.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” wrote the founding fathers in The Declaration of Independence.

The founding fathers, drawing on their knowledge of European History, philosophy and personal experience included the second amendment as a method of insurance should our government unfortunately turn for the worse.

If then that was the framers’ intent in including the second amendment, one is required to ask, “Where does it stop?”

Now, I am not saying that citizens of the United States – or any other nation for that matter – should be able to go to the store and buy a nuclear warhead. I never have said that and I never will.

However, imagine when Hitler was rapidly invading countries and exterminating innocent Jews, that the citizens of those countries were armed similarly to that of a common foot soldier. Many innocent lives would have been saved.

The same recurring example has emerged many times throughout history. Each time if the people had been armed, the outcome would have been entirely different.

The right to keep and bear arms was directly given to the people of The United States of America by the founding fathers. They believed that man should have the right to defend the unalienable rights we posses. Yet throughout the past 100 years that right has been more and more restricted and watered down to mean something less important that what the founding fathers originally intended.