Petoskey News Review
Jim Rudolph
June 16, 2022·2 min read

When our forefathers wrote the Second Amendment, they wanted to protect the right of the citizen soldiers to be armed. At the time our Constitution was written, a skilled musketeer could fire up to three shots a minute. Our forefathers wanted to protect the right of those citizen soldiers to bear arms, but with conditions to protect against mayhem.

If the founding fathers wanted free access to firearms, they could have composed the Second Amendment to be “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But they didn’t.

They could have put in minor restrictions such as “A Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But they didn’t.

And even more interesting, they didn’t write “A 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.”

No. They wrote “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.”

How does just an average citizen differ from a militia? How does a militia differ from a regulated militia? How does a regulated militia differ from a well-regulated militia?

When many states allow anyone 18 years of age unfettered access to 100-round military weapons, how can that in any way be construed to be a well-regulated militia?

The U.S. keeps granting more and more firearm access to more and more people. As the numbers of mass shootings increase, they fail Logic 101 and grant even more access.

Think of Albert Einstein’s quote "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Letter to the Editor: Founding fathers never anticipated present day conditions

https://www.yahoo.com/news/letter-editor-founding-fathers-never-041510759.html