Should the second amendment be rewritten

In the interest of expediency, and to conserve keystrokes, I took the liberty to address your rebuttal in Round 2 paragraph by paragraph. 1) Your concerns that the amendment process today, as opposed to the time of our inception, is in the hands of untrustworthy career politicians, suggests a deep distrust in the People " the ones on whom the ratification process depends. Government may propose any amendment they wish; however, the final say in not in their hands. My biggest fears in that regard comes from the un/under-informed electorate. 2) The current system of enslavement, while it clearly falls along economic and societal lines, is also political. The motivation for the government to dole out more and more "freebies" for the purpose of growing and sustaining a large dependent class, is rooted more in the securing of votes than in the betterment of the recipients, thereby securing a "guaranteed" voter base and a better chance of retaining political power. The pertinence of the enslavement statement, however, is that marshal law is easier declared and carried out on a population that already views government as its provider, its protector and its master. The larger, more entrenched that sector of the population is, the more confidently and easily the government can impose itself. Freedom requires a confident independence, while slavery requires only submission. 3)(a) Would you have us believe that there can be no crime in the absence of a regulated privilege? A crime is an act carried out by one individual against another. That a person owns a firearm, or any weapon, by Right " that is, by some authority other than a regulated privilege, does not exempt his criminal behavior with that weapon from the realm of criminal prosecution. The "governing body" that claims jurisdiction over such behavior is of a far higher authority than any written statute, though prosecutorial jurisdiction still rests in the courts ... with or without evidence of a regulated privilege. 3)(b) The authority of the federal government to regulate the manufacture, distribution and transport of firearms is derived from their authority under the "Commerce Clause", and is based on the interstate nature of that industry. It is, therefore, those activities that are rightly classified as "regulated privileges"; however, no such Constitutional authority is granted the federal government over commerce conducted within the territorial boundaries of any State. As for the intrastate part of that transaction, I"m not aware of any such grant of power to the States by that same Constitution. It should be noted, however, that I do not object to having background checks prior to the sale of a firearm through federally licensed dealers (FFLs); however, I do not agree with either the maintenance of a data-base of registry, nor with the requirement to obtain and maintain a state-issued permit to exercise a Right. If an activity is acknowledged as a Right within the Bill of Rights, and a prohibition against infringement exists therein, and so long as the actor acts in a responsible manner " taking into full consideration the safety of the general public, then any statute, ordinance or rule intended to regulate or restrict that activity violates the infringement prohibition, and usurps the Spirit of the "Supremacy Clause" (Article VI, Section 2). If the second amendment can be (and it historically has been) deemed applicable only to those in the militia, and contending that that was not the intent of the founders, then that ambiguity should be removed. 4) Excellent resource; however, how a law " statutory or Constitutional " is drafted and passed/ratified, versus how it appears in its final form is irrelevant. It is, after all, by its final version, not its original, that we will be judged and held accountable. If in its final form it is prone to ambiguity, then in the interest of justice we should strive for greater clarity. 5) The main impetus for removing the "militia" reference has more to do with clearing the misconception that the "Right to keep and bear arms" is limited to those active in anything labeled as such, and less to do with the negative word association. The fact that any civilian militia would, with as much certainty as one can have, be monitored in the most negative preconceptions by government, they would also be the first targeted for neutralization in the event of total marshal law " justified or otherwise. In light of the current heavy arming of executive-branch bureaus, and the stronger push to establish some sort of state or national registry of gun owners, it is not out of the realm of possibility that government would use that data-base for the purposes of confiscation. Many say it wouldn"t or couldn"t happen here; however, I"ve no doubt the same denial was prevalent in 1930"s Germany as well. 6) I"m in partial agreement with your assertion that "the government has a responsibility to position its people in a way that they [those people] may become a militia when needed"; however, where does that leave the rest of the population in the event that the problem IS that government? 7) To assert that the removal of the "militia" reference "would only lead to the argument that firearms are strictly for personal use," is to ignore the first statement in the proposed rewrite: "Being necessary to the security of a Free society." As I stated in Round 2, "militia groups would be formed today just as their predecessors were: by assembling rag-tag groups of common people, armed with their private weapons." If a militia reference is to be retained, then it should be an extension of the Right of the People to independently organize as such, and have no bearing on the separate Right to keep and bear arms. In closing, I would submit that this proposal to rewrite the second amendment is but an attempt to open the debate on the subject. As a strong proponent of the rule of law, I will operate within the spirit of the law as it exists, and would not recommend " neither for myself nor others " the notion that anyone should operate to the contrary.