The Stupid Anachronism of the American Second Constitutional Amendment
Beijing, China, February 26th, 2018
Salaroche


“The ages live in history through their anachronisms”, said Oscar Wilde, reminding us that, sometimes, what may have passed as wisdom yesterday may be considered stupid today. Case in Point: The American Second Constitutional Amendment.

Verbatim text of the 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".

Date in which the amendment was adopted: December 15, 1791.

The second amendment made plenty of sense within the circumstances in which it was adopted as part of the "Bill of Rights" more than 200 years ago. The American war of independence had ended only a few years earlier (1783) and the Continental Army had been disbanded just a year after that.

Since then the only professional armed forces that existed to defend the nascent country was the 3rd Infantry Regiment, which was supposed to protect the western border (the "Wild West").

In other words, by the time the second amendment was approved, the US did NOT have a professional army and relied on irregular militias composed in each estate by volunteer or part-time soldiers as a precaution for any military eventuality (see "for the security of a free State ")

The second amendment, therefore, was neither conceived nor adopted to protect the personal safety of any individual, but to give each state and the nascent country a certain level of security against any possible invader.

Please note that the second amendment clearly refers to "well-regulated militias" as means to safeguard the country, which today are entirely unnecessary, as the US has the most powerful armed forces in the world to protect it against any invader, besides having one of the most efficient police forces on the planet to maintain domestic order.

Evidently, all those Americans who even have arsenals in their homes, as well as all those crazy people who keep massacring students and people everywhere in the US, the least they have in common is membership in any "well-regulated militias".

Could anyone try to explain how much part of a "well-regulated militia" is that derangeded young man who massacred 17 people in Florida a couple of weeks ago, or that madman who massacred 58 spectators at a concert in Las Vegas in October of 17?

But let's not talk about this to any of those paranoid, lunatic NRA supporters, as they will not hesitate for a second to respond with foul-mouthed insults, since the insult is usually the last resort of all those individuals that lack arguments.

In a nutshell, the reason for this posting is nothing but to awaken in the memory of the readers some historical facts and circumstances that today have been malignantly misinterpreted at the national level especially for reasons of profit (NRA) and at the individual level for reasons of irrational personal fears as well as by people with cowboy complexes.

The remaining question is, why doesn’t the Supreme Court of the United States recognize their absurd, fatuous and anachronistic interpretation of the Second Amendment?

And the answer is: for the same reason that they don’t recognize the irrational, undemocratic and anachronistic premise behind the Electoral College, meaning: Most of them are infected with a severe strand of Cultural Stupidity.

Salaroche