Years ago we heard that both parts are of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are related.
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of the state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
It was not to provide gun ownership to anyone. Many cases before courts agreed that states and municipalities could restrict gun ownership. Sheriffs and U.S. Marshals in Dodge City, Kansas regularly took guns from visitors until they left. It wasn’t until after World War II that the gun sellers were overstocked with guns and wanted to sell them and make a lot of money, that they started this new hokum that the Second Amendment (read only the second part) was to allow access to guns a for anyone and for any reason. Gun people kept repeating that so folks started believing it.
Then, in 2004, a right wing Supreme Court overturned over 200 years of court decisions and divorced the first part of the Second Amendment from the second part, see the second comma in the quote above. This left it saying that civil authority had no right to keep people from shooting each other.
Now, we have more guns than people and people shooting themselves by accident (the biggest casualties from guns, to suicides, to mass shootings, etc) carnage due to misinterpretation of our Constitution. When guns are restricted, fewer people die. Having guns would not have stopped the Las Vegas shooter and might have caused more people to die.
I hear about defending ourselves from the U.S. So far the U.S. (and states) have been reluctant to use force when challenged, but imagine what a B52 could do to an encampment of protestors, who would be firing AK 47s at planes five miles in the sky? Too sick to laugh at.
We need to return to the original and Constitutional meaning of the Second Amendment, to bring sanity back to the U.S.
Peter Grant
Bristol