Letter: Understanding Bill of Rights and military arms important for all

Dear Editor,

At the time of the passage of the Bill of Rights (BOR), the people of a young nation had just gained their independence by defeating a country that had the greatest military in the world. At Concord in 1775, a confrontation between British troops and Minutemen occurred when the minutemen received word that the British were after the people’s gunpowder. After a skirmish, the British searched house-to-house for individual “military stores.”

The British were trying to confiscate and control all military-type arms that the minutemen could use to defend their liberty.


The BOR is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution and was passed because most believed the Constitution would not restrain the central government from abridging individual rights. The BOR would stop a centralized government from encroaching on the unalienable rights of the people. Therefore, a BOR was adopted to protect the people from an oppressive central government. When debating the formation of the Constitution and the first ten amendments, the framers wanted to protect the people’s rights from being infringed again by an all-powerful centralized government. The second of those amendments was adopted to defend their newly gained freedoms. 


When the Second Amendment states in part “…arms shall not be infringed,” the arms refer to military arms. The framers wanted the people to have access to military arms like the British to defend individual fundamental rights. The second amendment to the BOR protects the people’s unalienable right—not a right granted by the constitution or by government. The original purpose of the second amendment was to stop Congress from making laws that allowed any infringement upon the right of the people to keep and bear “military style” arms. 


“. . . As long as the government is perceived as ! working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” 
• Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403.

” … Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal – total control of handguns in the United States—is going to take time. … The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition . . . – totally illegal” (The New Yorker, July 1976). by Nelson T. Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.

Ken Rachal,

Thibodaux, La.