Monday, Sept. 21, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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The writer of the Sept. 11 letter “These militias aren’t regulated” shows his ignorance when he writes that a “well regulated militia” in the Second Amendment is the National Guard. Wrong. The National Guard is part of the U.S. Army, not the people’s militia. One would think a military veteran, as the writer claims to be, would know that.
People like this writer use the phrase “well regulated militia” as cause to vainly deny the rest of the Second Amendment’s text, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” That latter clause is a complete sentence that can stand on its own. The phrase “well regulated militia” is incapable of standing on its own.
The letter writer should read Federalist Paper No. 46, the brilliant essay by James Madison that clearly states that the right to keep and bear arms is a personal right of the people, not the right of some militia.
