by Donald Rosenberry

Created on: August 03, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2009

American society has reached a critical point in the debate over gun rights versus crime rates. The second amendment has been the most controversial of all amendments in the Bill of Rights. The words "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" are fraught with vagueness, partially due to the wording and partially due to the differences between the period in which they were written and the present.

At the time the Bill of Rights was written, there were many individual states that had already written their own versions of bills of rights. The second amendment looks strikingly similar to several of them. It is also critical to remember that the British were trying desperately to disarm their new "colonies" a failed effort which nonetheless greatly impacted the psyche of the framers of the Bill of Rights.

Thomas Jefferson purported that "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears its people there is liberty."That rationale has fueled the debate over whether the individual has the right to keep and bear arms.

Central to the discussion is the definition of the word "militia" and unfortunately this term has had several meanings. Today it is usually noted to mean a group composed of civilian citizenry who provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service in times of emergency. It has been argued that in the time since the Bill of Rights was adopted, the State's National Guard fulfills that role.

With that logic, the guarantee of the second amendment was that this force would have an inalienable right to bear arms as needed and when called to duty for the individual states. It is for that reason that the Chain of command for the National Guard ends with each states Governor, not the federal government.

This leads to the second tenant of the debate, which is the right to keep and bear arms. This is often fashioned to mean the individual would have their own weapon with which to use in aggregate with fellow citizens to rise against the government. Others posit the National Guard fits the description of the second amendment most perfectly in today's America.

These men and women are ordinary civilians who, when needed, are called upon to provide defense and emergency law enforcement. Their arms are stored in armories at facilities dedicated to the National Guard to "keep" in preparation for the time they might

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