SECTION 1. The right of the people, as individuals, to keep and bear arms and ammunition, and to be trained in their care and use, shall not be infringed.

SECTION 2. The prefatory clause of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States shall not be construed as either limiting or expanding the scope of its operative clause, or the scope of Section 1 of this amendment.

(HOORAY! The Cultural Bill of Rights ebook is now available for purchase!)

COMMENTARY:

This Amendment establishes as a matter of Constitutional writ what the Supreme Court has already decided in Heller v. District of Columbia (but narrowly – it was a 5-4 decision): that the right to bear arms is a right possessed by the people as individuals without any connection to actual militia enrollment. Put another way, the prefatory clause of the 2nd Amendment (“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State”) may as well read, “Because unicorn meat makes for good eatin’,” for all it matters – it has no bearing on the operative clause. Because the Heller decision is so exposed to later reversal, it’s best to explicitly incorporate the decision into the Constitution itself.

The extension of this right to both ammunition and training gets rid of a couple of sneaky runarounds that progressives have attempted to curtail gun rights. In one case, they allowed guns but tried to ban ammo. In another case, they made training a mandatory prerequisite for a license and then used zoning ordinances to eliminate all training facilities, thus depriving people of a means to fulfill licensing prerequisites. Both of these cases were defeated in court, but again, one defeat is no guarantee against future courts.

Section 1 does the heavy lifting. Section 2 is there to make sure the 2nd Amendment’s militia clause doesn’t interfere. I could have repealed the 2nd Amendment altogether, replacing it with this one, but I was warned that doing so might also repeal all existing case law concerning gun rights, and I didn’t want to cause an upheaval there. My intent is that Section 2 will successfully allow existing case law on gun rights to be seamlessly applied to this new Amendment.

(Buy the Cultural Bill of Rights ebook, now available at multiple retailers!)

The Cultural Bill Of Rights
–CBOR-7Y: The Seven Years Amendment
–CBOR-RF: The Religious Freedom Amendment
–CBOR-2A: The New Second Amendment
–CBOR-CP: The Capital Punishment Amendment
–CBOR-ED: The Eminent Domain Amendment
–CBOR-17: The Senate Restoration Amendment
–CBOR-SC: The Supreme Court Amendment
–CBOR-QV: The Qualified Voters Amendment
–CBOR-AR: The Anti-Reparations Amendment
–CBOR-GS: The Gender Standardization Amendment
–CBOR-MS: The Marriage Standardization Amendment
–CBOR-PM: The Protection of Minors Amendment