How 2A Came to Be
Efforts to subvert its meaning
or rewrite history are common

NOTE: Daniel B. Moskowitz penned an editorial about what the Second Amendment meant, as ratified, for JPFO’s e-blast in June 2022. Unfortunately, he made several errors of omission and analysis, and these slipped by us. JPFO regrets these errors and we apologize, things do get posted on rare occasion without adequate review. We believe this article here accurately states the case.

The Moskowitz article, by incorrectly stating the Second Amendment wasn’t understood as an individual right, implied the Supreme Court had changed the meaning, which it did not. It was in the late 1960s that progressives began promoting the specious notion that 2A was what they termed “a collective right,” a fabrication that meant we the people did not have the right.

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When the Second Amendment was written as a part of the Bill of Rights, it was uncontroversial. The new American republic had just transited through a grueling revolutionary war to throw off rule of the British crown. The British government had been violating the rights of Englishmen, including the right to keep and bear arms. The first battle of the war started as the British army marched through Lexington to Concorde, Mass., to confiscate arms and ammunition the colonists had stockpiled. After several instances where arms and ammunition were confiscated from individuals, General Gage acted to disarm the entire town of Boston.

Several state governments had instituted provisions in their state constitutions to protect the right to keep and bear arms more rigorously than unwritten British common law. During drafting of the U.S. Constitution, a Bill of Rights was deemed necessary to limit the power of the new federal government, to prevent the abuses of the British government.

The Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The meaning was always clear. In slightly more modern language it is this: Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to free state’s security, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. .....