The Second Amendment

"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."

"Listen my children and you shall hear, the midnight ride of Paul Revere", are the famous words by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  On April 7, 1775, Paul Revere set out on his famous ride from Lexington to Concord to warm the minutemen that, "the British are coming!"  It is because of those minutemen the 13 Colonies were able to defeat the British in the American Revolutionary War.  The Second Amendment granted citizens the right to bear arms, thus the Union was allowed to keep their minutemen, or militia.  A militia is an armed group of civilians with a vested interest in their communities and was controlled by the states.  The Anti-Federalist believed that armed people were a check on federal power.

The United States Supreme Court rules in the District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) specified that the types of arms the Second Amendment protected are those "typically possessed by law-binding citizens for specific purposes."  I think the United States Government is quick to forget who won them their freedom in the first place.  It wasn't the officers whom had their men line up in rows to engage in "gentleman’s warfare" and get slaughter time and time again by a much more brutal and stronger British opposition.  The true heroes of the American Revolutionary War and the freedom of all that America stands for today were the farmers, the trappers, the country boys, the woodsmen, and the trackers.