The two are linked. You have a right to form a militia, You have the right to bear your private arms.
The right to form a militia without the right to own arms is worthless. Of what value is an unarmed militia?? Without the right to form a militia, you stand alone against any combination.
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 Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights on September 28, 1776. Article XIII:
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
"As the instrument came from them it was nothing more than the draft of a plan, nothing but a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people, speaking through the several state conventions. If we were to look, therefore, for the meaning of the instrument beyond the face of the instrument, we must look for it, not in the general convention, which proposed, but in the state conventions, which accepted and ratified the Constitution."
- - James Madison
As quoted by Prof. George Steven Swan, School of Law, St. Thomas University, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, October 13, 1987. |
