THE SECOND AMENDMENT

The ‘Right to Bear Arms’ is subject to the interpretation of who is sitting on the Supreme Court

The amendment reads: "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."

America’s left-wing insists that the term ‘well regulated militia’ applies to the U.S. military and not to individual citizens.

As someone who minored in History and has studied the Constitution, I have learned that the Constitution is a 'Living Document' because it is subject to interpretation by the courts. The first ten amendments to the Constitution, our Bill of Rights, are not chiseled in stone like the 10 Commandments.

In 2008 and 2010 the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment applies to individual citizens and not just to a well regulated militia.

__In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 US 570 (2008), the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that that Americans have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for self-defense.

__In McDonald v. Chicago, 561 US 3025 (2010), the Supreme Court expanded on Heller and ruled 5-4 that the private ownership of handguns applies to states and municipalities as well as the federal government.

In both cases the court’s four liberal justices voted to uphold the ban on guns enacted by the District of Columbia and the city of Chicago.

Currently the court has four conservative justices, four liberal justices and one justice who is moderate and occasionally casts a swing vote. If just one of those conservative justices is replaced by a liberal justice, we could easily see a different interpretation of the Second Amendment and our individual gun rights could go out the window.

Historically the Supreme Court has been reluctant to reverse prior decisions. However, with the country’s left-wing hell-bent on instituting strict gun controls, there is a good possibility that, given the opportunity, a Supreme Court having a majority of liberal justices would reverse Heller and McDonald.

A ruling that the Second Amendment applied only to the military and the police would not necessarily mean all citizens would have to give up their guns. However, it would allow states like California and New York, and cities like Berkeley and Chicago, to ban gun ownership and to confiscate the guns of individual citizens, even to the extent of prying them from their cold dead hands.

Since the right to bear arms is subject to the interpretation of who is sitting on the Supreme Court, all gun owners better start praying every night that all the four current conservative justices and the one moderate justice stick it out for the next four years. And they better start praying as well that the Republican Party gets its act together, because if it doesn’t, the next president will again be a Democrat. Then you can bet your life savings that the majority of justices will be liberals who will rule that the right to bear arms will no longer apply to individual citizens.