Tradewinds flashback. Joe Forbes first Tradewinds article.

ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH:

The Second Amendment Is Not About Duck Hunting, The Army,
Or The National Guard

(Recent events have raised the public discussion of the Second Amendment and how it
affects government regulations of firearms. In the coming months, this space will feature
a continuing essay by an attorney dedicated to protecting your Second Amendment
rights.)

“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.”

The Second Amendment of the United Sates Constitution has
absolutely nothing to do with possession of firearms for sporting purposes,
although that is a beneficial “side effect” enjoyed by gun owners. It is more
closely related to the individual right of self-defense, but history shows that
the main purpose of the amendment is to protect the citizenry from an
overbearing, tyrannical government.
It is debatable whether citizens would stand a chance against modern
weapons like drones and missiles, but that is not the subject of this
discussion. Instead, our focus is to establish, by legal and historical
evidence, that the purpose for the amendment’s existence is to resist tyranny.
This series of articles will be divided into five sections:
1) The historical perspective of the framers of the constitution,
including English political history, the right of self-defense, and the
definition of “militia”,
2) The framers’ philosophical backgrounds and the politics of the day,
3) Whether the right to bear arms is an individual vs a collective right,
4) A grammatical analysis of the amendment, in both period and
modern terms, and,
5) Judicial interpretation of the amendment, past, present and future.
At the outset, the author would like to acknowledge that this article
draws heavily from an excellent law review article by David E. Vandercoy,
published at 28 Val. L. Rev. 1007 (1994).