Don’t Forget the First Half of the Second Amendment

To listen to the gun lobby, the Second Amendment provides an absolute constitutional right for an individual to own an array of armaments and ammunition free from regulation by the state. These advocates select from the amendment’s text only what supports their individual-freedom view, but they ignore entirely the imperative that precedes, the framing device of the whole thing—to protect “the security of a free State.” Read in full, the text of the amendment is not a prohibition on gun regulations but, rather, a requirement of certain regulations necessary for protecting that security and freedom.

Gun-rights activists point to the 2008 Supreme Court decision in as finally establishing, some 219 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, an individual right