"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." ---Thomas Jefferson, 1816.
             The issue of gun control is an age-old question that was first brought to the front by the founders of this nation in The Second Amendment. The Second Amendment was meant to accomplish two distinct goals, each perceived as crucial to the maintenance of liberty: First, it was meant to guarantee the individual's right to have arms for self-defense and self-preservation. Such an individual right was a legacy of the English Bill of Rights. In keeping with colonial precedent, the American article broadened the English protection. English restrictions had limited the right to have arms to Protestants and made the type and quantity of such weapons dependent upon what was deemed "suitable" to a person's "condition." The English also included the provision that the right to have arms was to be "as allowed by law". Americans swept aside these limitations and forbade any "infringement" upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
             The second and related objective concerned the militia, and it is the coupling of these two objectives that has caused the most confusion. The customary American militia necessitated an armed public, and Madison's original version of the amendment, as well as those suggested by the states, described the militia as either "composed of" or "including" the body of the people. A select militia was regarded as little better than a standing army. The argument that today's National Guard, members of a select militia, would constitute the only persons entitled to keep and bear arms has no historical foundation. Indeed, it would seem redundant to specify that members of a militia had the right to be armed. A militia could scarcely function otherwise.
             This is easily concluded by the analysis of an amendment with a similar structure as that of The Second Amendment.
             "A ...