On the Second Amendment
As I write this, our streets are filled with concerned citizens —many of them children—marching in support of commonsense gun control. In light of that, I'd like to talk about the Second Amendment , which reads, in its entirety: 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. Our forefathers' way with words is well documented, but that, my friends, is a garbage sentence. Perhaps that's why its meaning has long been hotly debated. One school of thought, the individual right theory , claims that "the right of people to keep and bear Arms" confers an individual right to every citizen of the United States. Another school of thought, the collective rights theory , argues that the prefatory clause "A well regulated Militia" suggests the framers intended only to protect the states from the federal government legislating away their collective right to self-defe...