President Obama and the 2nd Amendment

I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms. I think we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation, that hunting and shooting are part of a national heritage, but I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals; that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities.

President Barack Obama

I beg to differ. The right to bear arms was not so that Americans could engage in the ‘national heritage’ of ‘hunting and shooting.’ President Obama paints a dichotomy that AK-47s should be with soldiers, not criminals? So, if you aren’t a soldier and have an AK, can one infer that you are probably a criminal? He has declared that only government-sanction individuals (i.e. soldiers) should have AKs. The .70 caliber flintlock musket was the military assault weapon of its day. If we had a modern militia in the sense the Founders viewed it, there would be an M-16 on the mantle of most homes. He reiterates this dichotomy by stating that AKs should be on battlefields, not our streets. So, though he claims to believe in the right to bear arms, he has a restricted view of it.

The right to bear arms was provided so that We the People and the several States could defend ourselves from powerful central government, like the one of King George III. The American Revolution would not have lasted long nor been concluded successfully if muskets were only in the hands of soldiers (that would be the Redcoats), not on the streets of our cities (e.g. Lexington, Concord, Boston, etc.). Americans were able to break free from an oppressive government because they were armed. They were armed for self-defense, not for ‘shooting.’ The purpose of an armed citizenry is to be one of the checks on government, which is why big government supporters don’t like the Second Amendment.