Our Second Amendment Rights Cannot Be Taken Away

David Codrea of the website The War on Guns: Notes From the Resistance notes that the commas, or lack thereof, in the Second Amendment continues to cause confusion as to the meaning of that amendment. He brings the question to Ammoland in order to bring the question to a wider audience and explore the answer.

“This comment is in response to your column in the June 2024 Firearms News. In the article dissecting the wording of the Second Amendment the breakdown that allowed for a prefatory and an operative clause is based on where the comma is placed,” a comment submitted to my website, The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance, began. “A long time ago – I’ll be 80 next year – it was pointed out to me that the Second Amendment had no punctuation in it. Meant to be read and understood as a single thought. A statement if you will. Of course, I haven’t that copy any more. My current Pocket Declaration and Constitution has 3 commas in its Second Amendment. If this can be shown to be the case it would be a great help. I’m sending this to you as it is beyond my means to ferret out the answer to this.”

Codrea then presents a several explications of the meaning of the Second Amendment from such notables as St. George Tucker, the National Archive which contains an early copy of the Bill of Rights, though the placement of commas varied in copies sent to the states for ratification. I urge gentle readers to read the entire article. The bottom line can be found here:

There’s still one factor not being considered though, even if such a “bold thought” should be more widely advanced by opportunistic violence monopolists trying to play “Gotcha!” with transcription glitches. As the Supreme Court Heller majority noted:

“The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.”

In other words, if a tyrannical government does repeal the Second Amendment, it will not take away our right to keep and bear arms. Only we can give that up.

We know the Democrats would like to. That they haven’t dared try to go all the way, more than anything else, shows the Second Amendment is still working. That fills them with frustrated rage, and more than anything else, with fear.

Never forget that. Those who demand to rule you are scared of you. That’s why they hate you, that’s why they disparage you as racists and domestic terrorists, and that’s why they want to destroy you, knowing full well that they can’t cross the Rubicon without finding they’ve roused the wrong sleeping giant.

Exactly