Training may be "vital," but reading is fundamental

Waco Tribune-Herald editorial:  "Training is vital"

For instance, the right to carry a firearm is not “god-given” but comes from the Second Amendment — unfortunately, the most ambiguous of the Bill of Rights.

The editorial in Sunday’s paper lacked a signature, indicating it was drafted by the editor.  Any newspaper editor should at least be aware that rights don’t “come from” the Constitution or any Amendment.  The Constitution and the Bill of Rights simply protect rights that we already have.  If you don’t believe in a God, then “natural rights” or “human rights” works just as well as “God-given.”  What matters is that these rights are yours, by default, simply by virtue of being a human being.  Governments do not grant rights; they can only take rights away from you.  A government will either infringe your right to bear arms—as most governments do—or  respect and protect it, as ours does (at least some of the time).

The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to codify the rights we were known to have at the time of the drafting of the Constitution.  This creates a legal standard that the Courts can then use to uphold those rights.  The Ninth Amendment points out that not all existing rights were necessarily known as of that time of drafting.  This alone should indicate to you that the Constitution doesn’t grant them.  They are there already, some merely waiting to be discovered.

So the editor's chief failing in drafting this editorial was a lack of awareness of the Constitution's wording and intent.  I have to wonder whether he (Steve Bogg?  Bill Whitaker?) has even read the document.  

There is more to take issue with in the editorial than this, of course.  The wording is only "ambiguous" to those who haven't read it in the context of the times, in which the wording was a great deal more specific than folks today seem to think.

That pesky introductory clause about a “well-regulated militia” still divides scholars. 

It actually doesn't so much "divide scholars" as it does confuse those who don't understand the parlance of the time.  "Well-regulated" simply means "in good operating order."  It doesn't carry the connotation of "regulated" that today's conversation does (namely, that the government must provide the regulatory force).  A cursory examination of prose from the period bears this out, as the following samples provided by Brian T. Halonen indicate.  The quotes are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary.

1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."

1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."

1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."

1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."

1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."

1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."

The Second Amendment doesn't require that the militia be "well-regulated" in the sense of having structure and restrictions imposed on it by government.  It simply requires that the militia be in good working order, and that requires the militia to be armed.  Furthermore, the wording of the Second Amendment itself is often misconstrued to imply a condition, whereas it's actually merely providing a reason.  Nothing in the Amendment requires that a militia exist.  The wording is thus:

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.

We can diagram this sentence to discern its true meaning, but it should actually only be necessary to dissect that initial clause.  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" can be rewritten as "Because a militia is necessary to the security of a free state" without changing its meaning.  Try it yourself.  Then try changing the wording to "Only if a well-regulated militia exists" and juxtapose it with the remainder of the Amendment, as the pro-gun-control liberals do.  The meaning of the Amendment is profoundly changed...but only because the intent of that clause has been completely perverted.

We've all also frequently encountered the objection that a "militia" must exist at all in order for the clause, and therefore the Amendment, to hold true.  Well-regulated or otherwise, if there is no militia at all (so the argument goes), there is no purpose to the Amendment.  

False.

From Findlaw:  US Constitution - Second Amendment:  

However, the Supreme Court has now definitively held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that weapon for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Moreover, this right applies not just to the federal government, but to states and municipalities as well.

As for what the militia is, that's pretty simple.  It's us.  All of us.

From the Constitution Society's discussion on the Second Amendment, some selected quotes from Founders (offered during and around the Constitutional Convention):

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."— George Mason

"The militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, ... all men capable of bearing arms;..."— "Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic", 1788 (either Richard Henry Lee or Melancton Smith).

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People."— Tench Coxe

That about covers my tear for today, which is limited pretty much to the editor's lame verbiage (indicative of a lame understanding of Constitutional considerations).  In a later column I'll discuss the pros and cons of gun control itself.