The Most Dangerous Misunderstanding

The world is full of misunderstandings, most of them matter very little, a few of them matter, but I know of at least one that matters a whole hell of a lot. I am talking about the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

"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."

What we have been told this means is in order to protect the state we need a militia, so the militia has the right to keep and bear arms. That is wrong, not only that but it just does not say anything of the sorts. It says "the right of the people". Now we know it is being interpreted wrong, so what does it say?

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" this is saying we need a militia to guarantee the security of the state. Well duh, that is obvious, why say it at all. You notice that after this statement there is a comma, not a period, that comma means that the next statement is related to the first. The next statement is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.". So because we need a militia, the people shall maintain their right to keep and bear arms. The people's right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, because we have to have a militia, and the people have to have the ability to defend themselves from that militia.

The people who wrote this document had just defeated a tyrannical government, and gained their freedom. They wanted to insure that no such absolute power could ever be formed here, they wanted the people to have the power to take the government back if it was to ever run astray.

The second amendment has already been compromised, we can't own weapons that the state can, and we are limited in magazine size some places. The purpose of the second amendment was to insure the citizens could defend themselves from the government. How can we defend ourselves, if we can't have tanks, fighter jets, missiles, and many other restricted weaponry? We can't, is the answer. That is why we cannot allow further erosion of the second amendment.