This is the section of the lesson Bill Norton says surprised him most while researching Behind the Bill of Rights, and he knows it will not land easily. He is, in his own words, strongly pro Second Amendment. He also reads it as written: the amendment's stated purpose is a well regulated militia, and the individual right sits behind that purpose rather than in front of it.
First he clears up what the militia is, because the media almost never gets it right. It is not a group of sovereign citizens training in the mountains of Idaho. It is the people in general, plus the organized militia that the Constitution says is raised, funded, and trained by government, typically the states.
Then the part worth sitting with. Norton says the founders wrote very little about the fundamental principle behind the right to bear arms, and he found out why. It was English common law for centuries. There was a time when it was the law that you had to own a longbow and know how to use it, and to make sure your sons could too. It was so self-evident that it barely needed writing down. He and Jenny Beth Martin note what has changed: two hundred years ago you could not pick up a phone and call for backup.
So why is it in there at all? Because the founders needed a well regulated militia, and history's best formula for one is a people already armed. The right follows from the purpose.
And here is where it comes back around. Norton argues the secondary thing does not disappear when the primary thing does, and gives an analogy: pass a law saying that in order to obtain bread, the right to drive shall not be infringed, then eliminate bread, and nobody loses their car. Eliminate the militia and the individual right is still standing, because it existed first. He credits the Supreme Court in Heller with spelling this out, and recommends reading the opinion.
Watch the full lesson at jennybethshow.com. More at teapartypatriots.org. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.
00:00 — Into the Second Amendment
00:27 — Individual Right or Collective Right: The Debate
00:51 — What the Militia Actually Is
01:55 — The National Guard, and the General Public
02:37 — Norton's Answer: The Militia and the People Collectively
02:53 — Why the Founders Said So Little About It
03:34 — English Common Law and the Longbow You Had to Own
04:40 — Two Hundred Years Ago You Could Not Call for Backup
05:35 — Why It Ended Up in the Bill of Rights Anyway
06:12 — The Supreme Court, Heller, and the Secondary Right
06:53 — The Bread and the Car: Norton's Analogy
07:46 — What the Second Amendment Is Actually About
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