Back in my younger and more stupid days, I thought the whole "well regulated" thing in the Second Amendment might open it up to gun control. My government professor told me that plenty had tried, but to no avail. That's a very good thing in my book, and as I got older, I understood why that was the case.
Democratic Senate Candidate James Talarico, however, never came to that understanding. He's pushed that particular myth recently.
We haven't had that discussion a thousand times since I asked that government professor about that in the last century.
Anyway, before I could see the comment and say anything, legal scholar Jonathan Turley got to it, and he took Talarico to the proverbial woodshed.
A virtual cottage industry has emerged among people finding James Talarico clips espousing everything from declaring his campaign meat-free to there being six genders to God being non-binary. One recently uncovered video from a meet-and-greet, however, attracted my interest and deepened my concerns about Talarico. It shows Talarico explaining why sweeping gun control laws do not violate the Second Amendment. The reason, he declared, is that the Second Amendment expressly embraces gun controls by referring to the right as “well regulated.”
In the clip, Talarico mocks those opposing gun control measures and bans as not taking the time to actually read the Amendment:
“A lot of politicians like to talk about the Second Amendment. Very few have actually read the Second Amendment, because, if they did, they would know that the words ‘well regulated’ are right there in the text of the amendment itself.”
What he omits is the word following “well regulated”: “militia.”
It is hardly a long read, so here is the language:
“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 term “well regulated” was not a reference to regulation in the contemporary sense. It was used to mean orderly or well-maintained. Militias were considered the backbone of the American military, particularly by those who feared a standing army. Some militias were less capable than others in the Revolutionary War. A well-regulated militia meant state militias that were combat-ready.
The individual right to possess guns was viewed as central to maintaining such militias. However, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a “well regulated militia” was not a limitation but a justification for the individual right.
And, interestingly enough, they never seem to counter "well regulated," as it stands in their interpretation, against "shall not be infringed." If "well regulated" means gun control, then it cannot co-exist with the idea that the right to keep and bear arms is uninfringeable. They're contradictory statements, after all.
The problem I had all those many moons ago, and that Talarico has now, is that he and so many others have failed to read beyond the introductory clause. "It says 'well regulated' right there, durhur!"
That alone should raise big red flags for anyone, unless they're just cherry-picking the phrases that they can twist to justify what they want.
You see, unlike Talarico's claims suggest, we have read the Second Amendment. We read all of it, not just the parts that serve as a justification for something we know from the Founding Fathers' own words that they never had any interest in.
Unfortunately, this won't be the last time we end up having this conversation, either, because gun control advocates like Talarico won't be dissuaded from spouting disproven nonsense if they think it'll give them an edge in the polls.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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