This November, Reward Candidates Who Fail the NRA’s Test

This November, Reward Candidates Who Fail the NRA's Test The only amendment in the Bill of Rights that literally includes the word "regulated" within its very text is the Second. Yet strangely, the NRA and other gun extremists think the right to bear arms is the only one among the Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791, that should be totally un- regulated. A fellow journalist whose work I admire recently educated me about 18th-century usage of the word "regulated." According to him, the words "well regulated" in the Second Amendment are a reference to supply. In that context, he explained, the Framers were saying that militias should be “well supplied” with guns and ammunition. As much as I respect my colleague, further research reveals that he’s only partially right — perhaps only arguably so. Various sources including self-described “right-to-bear-arms attorney,” Daniel J. Schultz, assert that “well regulated” in the 1700s likely referred to something along the lines of a clock keeping good time — not governmental regulations controlling firearm ownership or usage. But even in the metaphorical sense of clockworks precisely fulfilling the need to accurately mark or “regulate” time, wouldn’t “a well regulated militia” similarly mean providing an accurate number of firearms requisite to ensure the “security of a free state?” In that sense, we’re talking about an educated, however finite, estimation rather than unlimited access to guns to everyone, everywhere, all the time. If gun rights advocates like Schultz want to argue that by “well regulated” Bill […]

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