Framers intended citizen militia
By The Bakersfield Californian
The letter writer who seems to think that the "militia" mentioned in the Second Amendment refers to the "police, national guard and military reserves" ("Amendment's literal meaning," Feb. 6) does not understand the Constitution as well as she thinks she does.
The writers of the Bill of Rights had just come out of a revolution against tyranny. They knew the value of a militia of citizens with their own weapons fighting an out-of control-government. The militia was completely separate from the regular army.
The Bill of Rights was a document defining what the government could not do -- one being infringing on the individual right to own and bear arms for a fight against future tyranny.
By the writer's standard, placing the militia back in the hands of a government-controlled agency puts the control of firearms back in the control of the government the founders wanted protection against in the first place.
It is ludicrous to think that this is what the founders had in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights.
Robert Braley
Bakersfield
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