Our Founding Fathers and the Second Amendment
Militias. Distrust of government. Abuse of power. The right to bear arms. Not a day passed without a passionate article or an editorial on the role of guns in American life. The year was 1775. More than 200 years later, the seminal debate undertaken as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formulated the laws of the land still echoes. Is the Michigan Militia an aberration or the Constitution in action? Is Gordon Liddy a dangerous demagogue or a devoted patriot? What exactly did the founding fathers mean when they penned the Second Amendment? No sampler can do justice to the debate, but the following excerpts shed light on the perceived relation between arms and liberty.