Amendment limits federal power

In the current discussion of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, some have creatively ventured a theory that the framers codified the constitutional right to keep and bear arms as an expedient to protect a fledgling federal government unable to finance its own army. While the young nation did rest security on a population of citizen soldiers, this interpretation is based on an incomplete reading of history and the framers' intent.

A people's right to possess arms for their own defense descends from centuries of European thought. The English Bill of Rights of 1689, contesting the will of the Crown to confiscate citizens' arms, undoubtedly inspired the framers. The new nation had just concluded a bitter war against that monarchy, which began when the minutemen confronted a British army intent on seizing their weapons.

Emerging from the Revolutionary War, the citizens deeply distrusted concentrated, centralized governmental power and standing armies, and they wrote the Constitution with that in mind. During ratification, to mollify the fears of some skeptics, the Bill of Rights was added. All of it, including the Second Amendment, is about limiting federal power - not augmenting it.

Congress already had the power to raise armies and collect taxes to finance them. The notion of a measure added to empower the federal government in a passage designed to limit it is incongruous.

Dale Fitzgibbons

Cedar Rapids