OUR 2ND AMENDMENT—

American society continues to wring its hands and toe the dust of failed policies in its search for safety from criminals with guns.

The answer could be found in the simple expedient of reflecting on our history.

Our Founding Fathers launched this, the most spectacularly successful exercise of freedom in the form of a government that human history has ever known.

The bedrock document responsible for this US of A is our Constitution and its first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights.

The prominence our founding fathers placed on the 2nd Amendment, The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, is chronologically obvious by its being preceded by only one other amendment, the first one, which guarantees our freedoms of religion, speech, the press, to peaceably assemble, and, to petition the government for a redress of our grievances.

And, the 2nd Amendment does not simply grant us the freedom to bear arms. It goes far beyond that, recognizing that right is so fundamental in a free country that:

“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.”

The right is automatic, therefore they said the “…right… …shall not be infringed.”

They recognized the “right” existed as surely and fundamentally as the laws of nature.

It did not have to be created by their new document.

And, they sought to preserve that right by the pure and simple language, “…shall not be infringed”.

Yes, there were bad guys back then in the late 1700s, not only criminals but tyrannical governments, and armed free men were the only device that could guarantee the acquisition and retention of safety and freedom.

In the case of our country we know it finally took The American Revolution to gain that freedom.

Now, some 230 years later, the US Supreme Court today begins to hear the case, D.C. v. Heller in which this freedom should be addressed as the central issue, and our society, long fettered by countless thousands of laws that trump this fundamental provision of our Constitution, could once again enjoy the freedom envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

Will this court display wisdom like that of the Founders who laid the very foundation for the laws of this land?

Our future safety and freedom depend on a positive answer to that question.