Columnist Brings Up Rebuttal to Guns Only for ‘Well-Regulated Militia’

The Second Amendment states that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. It doesn’t state that the right to keep and bear arms is exclusive to the well-regulated militia. We know this because the exact phrase is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The people. Not the militia.

That has never stopped some from trying to make that argument, though. They claim that “the people” really just means the states themselves–even though “the people” doesn’t mean “the states” anywhere else in the Constitution–and that we don’t really have an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Sure, the Supreme Court has officially slapped that down, but since we can all agree that the Supreme Court isn’t immune to getting things wrong, there’s no way that will suffice for most people.

Since I don’t agree with every SCOTUS decision, either, I can’t say I blame them for not just taking it at face value.

Then I found a column that, while long and covering a lot, offered up an interesting rebuttal to the whole idea that the Second Amendment is about the militia.

They see the “well-regulated militia” statement as a caveat that limits what firearms we can possess, claiming that “weapons of war” shouldn’t be in the hands of civilians. They see those who believe in these so-called weapons of war being in the hands of civilians as inherently taking a normatively right-wing standpoint. 

For the sake of testing this argument, we can acknowledge that the right to bear arms shouldn’t be infringed only within the context of where there’s a well-regulated militia in the context of the necessity of the security of a free state. In that case, we must also understand what follows if we investigate the premise that the state itself has refused to self-regulate. When the state refuses to self-regulate, we can come to the conclusion that the civilian populace being armed to counter the unregulated militia becomes, in a sense, the regulation of the unregulated militia. 

To those who call themselves progressive and also call themselves pro-gun control or pro-gun ban, I ask you to consider your thought process. Is the U.S. government a well-regulated militia when it’s enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza? Is it a well-regulated militia when it’s engaging in wars to further the longstanding goals of American imperialism that benefit the richest and most powerful, such as in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the current war in Iran? Is the U.S. government a well-regulated militia when it violates Americans’ constitutional rights, prioritizes corporate interests and targets people based on race? 

To me, the answer is no, in all of these cases. Nevertheless, gun-control advocates seem to believe that the government and military is more entitled than the civilian populace, which does not engage in these acts. The irony, to me, is that many within the gun-control advocacy sphere also happen to oppose at least one or more of the aforementioned operations. I join them in opposition to these actions, but I find their belief in disarming the populace to be self-defeating.

Now, I don’t necessarily agree with the author about these cited actions being inherently wrong–if Israel wanted to genocide Palestinians in Gaza, they sure went about it wrong, and I’m down with bombing the hell out of Iran after nearly 50 years of them attacking us via proxies, for example–the overall point remains.

If the well-regulated militia is the exclusive entity that can bear arms, then what recourse is there for the people as individuals?

Our Founding Fathers were skeptical about standing armies. They’d seen European nations use those standing armies as instruments of oppression, and not just against their enemies, but their own people. They also recognized that a people who couldn’t defend themselves from invasion would eventually be invaded and subjugated.

But states are not inherently moral entities. They’re a reflection of the people selected by whatever means to run those states.

If Israel is moral, it’s because their leadership is moral. If the United States is moral, then it’s for the same reason.

Yet how many people out there believe that Donald Trump is moral? Sure, many of you likely do to some degree or another, or at least moral enough to trust as president, but many others don’t. They think he’s a fascist dictator in the making.

These same people have long argued that “weapons of war” don’t belong in private hands. In other words, they trust the military and National Guard, which ultimately still answers to Trump, with being too moral to oppress the American people, despite also thinking Trump wants to be a tyrannical dictator for life.

It doesn’t make sense.

What does make sense is that the people who tend to favor gun rights are ideological opponents to these people, and thus disarming them is a good and just thing, because they’re convinced that history progresses on a straight line and that they’re on the right side of it.

But things don’t work out that easily.

In February 2025, white supremacists and neo-nazis marched into Lincoln Heights, Ohio. The Black community held an armed watch to ensure these outside actors did not cause harm to their community. There are pictures of people armed with semi-automatics during this event, which are legal to carry openly in Ohio. These people were in full justification to be on high alert. This is highly understood by the Black community following the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Those who make the argument that the presence of arms in the hands of civilians goes both ways should understand that having no arms in the hands of civilians renders groups who are primary targets of discrimination entirely toothless, which I see as much worse than the current landscape.

I read this, and yes, the Tulsa Race Massacre is definitely something to consider, but being from where I’m from, I think of a different incident.

Look, the fact that Lincoln Heights turned out to be a big nothing when it came to violent confrontations might have always been in the cards. However, it might not have, and those black men and women took up arms to protect them and theirs, which is the most American thing anyone can do in such a situation.

The state couldn’t protect them until something happened. They could protect themselves beforehand, and they did.

The “well-regulated militia,” as it currently exists, is entirely beholden to the government in some way, shape, or form, not the people. You cannot just hope and pray that those in the government will always be moral enough not to misuse it. Especially since even the idea of someone being moral can’t be agreed upon in this day and age.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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