What the founders meant by including the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights is perfectly clear to me. They did not want a standing army, but they realized a disciplined and organized force, a “well-regulated militia”, was necessary in a frontier country subject to Indian attacks, slave rebellions, civil unrest, pirate raids, and perhaps even foreign invasion. After all, we had just fought the English and there was the French and Indian War before that. But that is how I interpret history. Law is not based on private interpretation.

The Second Amendment has now been interpreted by the Supreme Court to say that private citizens have the right to bear arms. This might have not been all that foreign an idea to the founders, where the gun was rapidly replacing the sword as the sidearm of the gentleman, and where every gentleman reserved the right to be armed against the rabble. The high cost of firearms and the skills needed to operate them ensured their ownership was not general throughout the entire population. But the founders would also have agreed that firearm ownership should have been forbidden to some, including slaves, indentured servants, and hostile indians. Basically, it wasn’t a problem. Few people owned firearms, and they were usually held by “Gentlemen of Property” in town, and frontier folk who needed them in a lawless land, or as a farm tool.

Still what the founders believed, or what we think they believed, doesn’t matter. We have no right to interpret their wishes or desires, and they carry no weight in law anyway. All that matters is what they specifically included in the Constitution we are all sworn to honor, whether we agree with it or not. If there is an honest dispute as to how that Constitution is interpreted, that is why we have a Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has made the decision that citizens have the right to bear arms. I don’t fully agree with that interpretation, all the consequences of that decision or how it’s likely to be implemented. It will cause terrible suffering and violence. I also believe it is the result of a court stacked with conservatives who are pandering to a powerful and well-organized industrial lobby with no conscience, and a small but influential minority that is being manipulated by that lobby and that industry. It is the ignorance and fear of that minority that drives this debate, and the greed of those that exploit and profit from it. But that is my opinion. A duly constituted court has decided otherwise, and I am sworn to honor it. If we only honored the laws we agreed with, there would be chaos.

In the meantime, the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed, whether I like it or not, and I will honor that decision. This does not mean that the Second Amendment or the Court have forbidden the State to regulate firearms. Every right has exceptions and regulation, and there will be legal and electoral decisions in the future. But as far as the ownership of firearms by the common citizen is concerned, that case is closed.