The Second Amendment is Second Only to the First People who try to limit the second amendment to hunting needs or the maintenance of a State Guard unit are an affront to the sacrifice and genius of the founding fathers. The purpose of the second amendment is to assure that Americans stay armed, as the ultimate check on a government created with checks and balances.
Our founding fathers rightly feared having a central government that had the power to dominate citizens and deprive them of their liberties. They saw first hand that a country of well armed citizens could overthrow a government which oppressed them. The goal of the second amendment is to keep our federal government from ever thinking about depriving us of our constitutional rights.
The first amendment is much heralded, and it should be. The colonies were created in part because people wanted to be free to practice their religion without having their government involved. Our right of free speech is the ability to criticize our government and each other freely. We treasure these rights, as we should.
The second amendment is much maligned, and it should not be. The colonies could never have achieved independence without the population being well-armed. It was the ability of the colonists to form militias and carry out attacks against the British that gave us our victory. If we had not been armed, we would still be bowing to the royals of Britain.
The opponents of the second amendment don't get it. They don't get that our risks and our freedoms go hand in hand. Yes, an armed society has more gun deaths. If our only goal as a country was to minimize guns deaths, gun control measures would do it. But we have a bundle of rights, and those rights include the right to keep and bear arms. Assault weapons, too? Yes, if that is what a person wishes to buy, and they're not a criminal or a certifiably crazy person.
There will always be years when a Charles Whitman crawls up into a tower and shoots a bunch of innocent people. There will always be a Columbine high school student or a postal worker who decides to shoot his classmates or co-workers.
Violent criminals should be locked up and put away forever, whether they use a gun or not. Stop paroling violent criminals. Punish the crime, not the weapon of the crime. There are tens of millions of guns in this country, and most of them are used a lot more safely than the tens of millions of automobiles in this country, which are every bit as dangerous.
The second amendment is second only to the first. If we lose the rights in the second, we'll eventually lose the rights in the first.