Ask a U.S. citizen what the Second Amendment stands for. Some respond this amendment protects an individuals right to carry a gun. Like a shooter who misses the target, they are confused as to the amendments scope and intent.

Historically, the Second Amendment safeguards the citizens right through the states efforts to recruit armed militias that defend our nation. In 1939, Robert H. Jackson, who served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelts solicitor general, maintained the Second Amendment is restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security. Robert Bork, President Ronald Reagans nominee for the Supreme Court in 1989, then agreed, saying this amendment works to guarantee the right of states to form militia, not for individuals to bear arms. On target, Bork later missed the mark as to what the Second Amendment allows.

Granted, its stilted expression blurs the amendments meaning. It 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.

Constitutional framers were wary of growing a federal government that usurped the rights of states to defend themselves. Consequently, the federal army remained small. When President Thomas Jefferson left office in 1809, federal troops numbered a little more than 12,000. Most patrolled the western frontier, consisting of territories east of the Mississippi River, which included the Ohio River Valley. There Native Americans fought encroaching white pioneers. Federal troops protected white settlers who headed West through the Cumberland Water Gap.

Whena foreign adversary attacked the U.S., colonials assumed states had the rightto raise volunteer militias to defend the nation. States fiercely protectedtheir rights to draft, fund and provide leaders for local militias.

Statesexpressed slight, if any, concern about the federal government infringing oncitizens by denying them the right to carry a gun. The colonial U.S. was an agriculturaleconomy. Farmers hunted game to supplement harvested crops. Children 10 yearsand older fired muskets to kill deer while their parents worked the land. ThomasJefferson shared the cultural assumption that the U.S. would prosper with10-year-olds trained to fire muskets.

Historian Garry Wills pointed out that the Second Amendment had everything to do with the common defense and nothing to do with hunting: One does not bear arms against a rabbit.

Since the 1970s, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendments meaning on its head. It cleverly treats the opening to the amendment about arming militias as a preface to its alleged main punchline: every citizen has the right to carry a gun.

The NRAs grammatical hatchet separates the amendments two clauses. The second clause is wrongly elevated about alleged gun rights, casting aside state militias right to bear arms.

When the NRA kept its national headquarters in Washington D.C. instead of moving to Colorado Springs in the late 1970s, it placed a motto on its headquarters doors, making muddy the Second Amendments original meaning. The NRA separated the second clause from the first in its motto posted on the door: The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.

Historian Jill Lepore traces the NRAs slippery slide to reshape the Second Amendment. In 1982, Utahs Republican Senator Orin Hatch headed the Judiciary Committee that passed a report: The Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Hatchs committee spun a convoluted constitutional argument thats off-target. What the Subcommittee [Hatch chaired] on the Constitution uncovered was clear and long lost proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for the protection of himself, the family, and his freedoms, scoffs historian Lepore, who rejects this faulty historical reading.

Many conservative citizens accept this unconventional interpretation of an alleged older, long-lost interpretation of the constitutions original meaning regarding their gun rights. Evangelicals tend to oppose restrictions on gun ownership, reported NBC News on September 4, 2019, and prefer having guns in the hands of good guys, schoolteachers, security guards and law-abiding citizens.

The NRA stacked the deck with handpicked pundits to support their false claim. Of twenty-seven law review articles published between 1970 and 1989 that were favorable to the NRAs interpretation of the Second Amendment, reports historian Lepore, at least 19 were written by authors employed or represented by the NRA or other gun groups.

The NRA violates the Second Amendments original intent: the right of states to arm their militias.

The Rev. Dr. Jack R. Van Ens is a Presbyterian minister who heads the nonprofit, tax-exempt Creative Growth Ministries (www.thelivinghistory.com), which enhances Christian worship through dynamic storytelling and dramatic presentations aimed to make Gods history come alive.

Excerpt from:

Van Ens: Hit the Second Amendment's bull's-eye - Vail Daily News