Clarify the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment suggests that "arms" are to be kept under the jurisdiction of a well-regulated militia. Arms are defined as military weapons. Generally available arms in the day of our Founding Fathers were assumed to be single-shot rifles powered by powder kept dry in powder bags and "shot" that was loaded from the muzzle. In today's USA, "militia" would be the federal armed forces, the state guards or the local police.

How did the constitution's "well-regulated militia" become ignored in today's dangerous world of automatic weapons of mass murder being kept by individuals and not part of any serious federal regulations?

Here is how it is happening: Adam Carrington, assistant professor of politics at Michigan's Hillsdale College shows that the U.S. Supreme Court has had the opportunity to clarify but has consistently shied away from clarification.

Carrington cites the 2008 case of D.C. v. Heller, wherein the Supreme Court reaffirmed the individual's right to own a gun but said "limits" exist to gun ownership without saying what those limits were. In 2010 McDonald v. City of Chicago, Justice Scalia stated that since this was the court's first hard look at the Second Amendment, there would be plenty of time to work on amendments. The court has consistently refused to set limits on standards. That refusal continues. An old saw is still true: "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt",

It is high time to start pushing for clarification of the Second Amendment by the courts or by constitutional amendment.

Robert M. Gerhold

Arlington Heights