You would think that a guy who is director of the Second Amendment Research Center at Ohio State University would at least know basic grammar before spouting off about the Second Amendment. In an article entitled "Taking a bite out of the 2nd" Saul Cornell claims:

Reads the Second Amendment: "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." The department's revised Second Amendment contends the right of individuals to keep and carry guns shall not be infringed.

The Department of Justice has erased the preamble, which states the purpose of the amendment, to create a "well regulated Militia." The revision goes well beyond the idea of interpreting the Constitution as a living document that must respond to changing times. In effect, Justice believes it can expunge language that it finds inconvenient and substitute language more ideologically suitable in its place.

Although gun rights advocates have tried to claim that bearing arms did not have a military connotation at the time the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, they have never been able to provide a body of evidence to support their claims. The only evidence they have produced is a single text written by the losing side in the original debate over the Constitution.

First of all, I would like to point out that the Second Amendment Research Center claims that their mission is to foster debate about the Second Amendment. But they are funded by the Joyce Foundation, whose mission is clearly anti-gun. They claim to support "efforts to bring the firearms industry under comprehensive consumer product health and safety oversight." That's hardly encouraging.

When it comes to interpretation, you would think that figuring out the Second Amendment would be pretty easy. While the Second Amendment does mention a "well regulated militia" as the basic reason for such a protection, it also states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It takes a far stretch of the imagination to argue that by "people" the Founders actually meant military soldiers. Considering the context of the times, where colonists were being persecuted and harassed by military soldiers, it would be unconscionable for the Founding Fathers to protect the right of the state while infringing on those of the people. In fact the entire reason for having a Constitution is to limit the rights of government.

The term militia referred to all able bodied men who are prepared to fight for liberty and defense. It was a time of Minute Men, not standing armies. And when reading the Bill of Rights, it is clear that they protect individual freedoms. That the Second Amendment should be the single exception that protects government rights is ludicrous.

Cornell provides no evidence to back up his argument, and instead chooses to rely on Supreme Court precedence. I guess it has escaped Cornell that the Supreme Court is capable of being on the wrong side of human rights. The Dred Scott decision, for instance, affirmed the legality of slavery. PBS sums up the ruling: "In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States". Does Cornell think that the civil rights movement of the 1960s was just a bunch of blacks who were on the losing side of the original debate? I should hope not.

Cornell even goes so far as to claim that there is no evidence to the contrary, as if we are supposed to just accept him at his word. His students may be so blind, but I am not. To expand on the intent behind the Second, I turn to the Founding Fathers themselves. It was Thomas Jefferson who said:

What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

Still not convinced? Jefferson also said, "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." That sounds pretty clear cut.

But there's more. Patrick Henry claimed, "The great object is, that every man be armed ... Every one who is able may have a gun." George Washington said, "A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." And George Mason knew that "...to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

Those that drafted the Constitution had no trouble realizing that it is the right of all free men to keep and bear arms. Why then is it so hard for an Associate Professor of History to realize that?