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.
The Second Amendment continues to be a source of controversy even though its drafters knew what
they meant by it and historians themselves have begun to admit that supporters of gun rights have the
better of the constitutional argument. Those opposed to private gun ownership have been responsible
for some of the most dishonest constitutional scholarship in American history. They claim that the
Second Amendment involves not the individual right to own a firearm but only the states rights to
maintain an armed militia. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, The original
intent of the Second Amendment was to protect the right of states to maintain militias. That is a rather
strange interpretation of the amendment for a number of reasons, including the fact that the
Constitution had already provided for the existence and arming of a militia in Article I, Section 8. Today
the Left frequently claims that with state militias no longer in existence, the amendment now refers to
the National Guard. But they insist that it has nothing to do with an individuals right to own a firearm.

http://www.amazon.com/That-Every-Man-Armed-Constitutionalebook/dp/B00B5I2JP0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1428682603&sr=11&keywords=that+every+man+be+armed

Commentators at the time had a rather different view. According to Representative Fisher Ames of
Massachusetts, The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to
be inherent in the people. Tench Coxe wrote probably the most systematic early overview of the Bill of

Rights in the form of his Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution,
which appeared in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette in June 1789. He wrote, in part, that the people are
confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms. Madison later wrote to
tell Coxe that the ratification of the amendments would be indebted to the cooperation of your pen.
If the framers of the Second Amendment had intended it to apply to the right of a state to maintain a
militia, they would have used the word state instead of people. The rest of the Bill of Rights is very
precise in using the word people when referring to individuals and state when referring to the
states. There is no good reason to believe that the Second Amendment would be the sole exception.
The text of Madisons original draft of the Second Amendment is also revealing. It read: The right of the
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the
best security of a free country. In order to have a well-armed and well-regulated militia, it is necessary
to recognize the peoples right to gun ownership. Madison emphasizes the peoples right to keep and
bear arms, and only secondarily speaks of the militia. (The term well-regulated does not refer to
government regulation. Hamilton sheds light on the term in Federalist #29, where he writes that a
militia acquired the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated
militia by going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary.)
Ninth Amendment.
The enumeration of the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people.
The constitutional right of private gun ownership stands even without the Second Amendment.
Suppose, against all evidence, that its drafters really did mean state governments instead of individuals
when they wrote that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. In that
case, the right to gun ownership would still be protected, but under the Ninth Amendment. That
amendment was drafted to address the concerns of those who feared that if certain rights were singled
out for protection in the Bill of Rights, all other rights not singled out would be insecure. This
amendment made clear that the enumeration of certain rights in the Bill of Rights was not exhaustive,
and was not meant to imply that they were the only rights that the people enjoyed.
Tenth Amendment.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The Tenth Amendment guaranteed the states rights to self-government. If the states had not delegated
a particular power to the federal government, and if the Constitution had not forbidden the power to
the states, then it remained as reserved to the states or the people. For Thomas Jefferson this was the
cornerstone of the entire Constitution. Its presence in the Bill of Rights serves to remind us of the
importance of self-government in the minds of Americans of the early republic.

Since the states existed prior to the federal government, they were the source of whatever power the
federal government had. Thomas Jefferson determined the constitutionality of proposed legislation on
this basis: If he did not find the power spelled out in Article I, Section 8, then it remained reserved to the
states. It would be unconstitutional for the federal government to exercise the proposed power. If the
Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal governments present activities would
not exist. Thats why no one in Washington ever mentions it.
What is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to
enslave them. George Mason, father of the Bill of Rights.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to
commit crimes. . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they
serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with
greater confidence than an armed man. Thomas Jeffersons commonplace book, 1774-1776,
http://www.amazon.com/Jeffersons-Literary-Commonplace-Book-Princeton/dp/0691607508

Quoting from On Crimes and Punishment (1764) by criminologist Cesare Beccaria

http://www.amazon.com/On-Crimes-Punishments-Hackett-Classics/dp/0915145979

The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms has justly been considered the palladium of the liberties of
the republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers,
and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and
triumph over them. Joseph Story, 1833 U.S. Supreme Court Justice