Does The Second Amendment Need Amending?

Does The Second Amendment Need Amending?
As long as the Second Amendment remains as written, we will be discussing what is means forever. "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." While many read the Second Amendment in parts, many disassociate the prefatory statement,  “A well regulated Militia necessary to the security of a free state, ” with “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” as two separate and equal declarations. 

I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that, at that time, there was a very specific and distinct need to provide our ‘minute men’ with an expressed legal right.  They were required to assemble, with their arms and ammunition in a very short time to fend off any intruders, which might threaten the security of our newly formed free state. I believe that our forefathers intended that the Second Amendment assured the people that we would and could defend ourselves in a moment’s notice because of the second part of the Amendment 
So let’s take a look at how our members of the Supreme Court interpret the Amendment.

Meaning of "well regulated militia
"The term "regulated" means "disciplined" or "trained In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that the hyphenated adjective 'well-regulated' implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and Alexander Hamilton suggested that well-regulated refers not only to "organizing", "disciplining", and "training" the militia, but also to "arming" of the militia.

Meaning of "the right of the People
"Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, stated: “Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right. In all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in the prefatory clause. As described as follows, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”— those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people”.

Justice  John Paul Stevens countered in his dissent: When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as it appears, no more than that was contemplated. But the Court itself reads the Second Amendment to protect a “subset” significantly narrower than the class of persons protected by the First and Fourth Amendments; when it finally drills down on the substantive meaning of the Second Amendment, the Court limits the protected class to “law-abiding, responsible citizens.

Meaning of "keep and bear arms
"In Heller the majority rejected the view that the term "to bear arms" implies only the military use of arms: Before addressing the verbs “keep” and “bear,” we must interpret the object: “Arms.” The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity. Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.” At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia. Nine state constitutional provisions written in the 18th century or the first two decades of the 19th, which enshrined a right of citizens to “bear arms in defense of themselves and the state” again, in the most analogous linguistic context—that “bear arms” was not limited to the carrying of arms in a militia. The phrase “bear Arms” also had at the time of the founding an idiomatic meaning that was significantly different from its natural meaning: “to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight” or “to wage war.” But it unequivocally bore that idiomatic meaning only when followed by the preposition “against,” Every example given by petitioners for the idiomatic meaning of “bear arms” from the founding period either includes the preposition “against” or is not clearly idiomatic. In any event, the meanings of  “bear arms” that petitioners and Justice Stevens propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.
 
In a dissent, joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Beyer, Justice Stevens said: “The Amendment's text does justify a different limitation: the "right to keep and bear arms" protects only a right to possess and use firearms in connection with service in a state-organized militia. Had the Framers wished to expand the meaning of the phrase "bear arms" to encompass civilian possession and use, they could have done so by the addition of phrases such as "for the defense of themselves”.

So where does that leave us? In the early days when this country was being expanded and well before we became somewhat more civilized, everyone had a gun. There were no regulations that limited gun ownership. There were no permits required, or licenses. Everyone had a gun for a variety of reasons, and of course, that stimulated the expression, “The Wild West”, during our expansion. However, the culture today reasons differently because the society has developed a significantly different set of values. Our need for guns has been dramatically subordinated by the increase of police powers, still no one can guaranty that an individual will be 100% protected by police enforcement organizations, nor can we guaranty 100% protection with the ownership of guns. Therefore, each of us interprets the second amendment in a personalized manner. There are those who profess that the complete elimination of guns will protect all of us, while others believe that only those who possess guns will have the protection needed. It is too diverse an issue for a single sentence to clearly identify the intent of the founding fathers. Therefore, the second amendment needs to be restated so that those who associate owning a gun with the militia are not confused with those who believe owning a gun is a separate and equal constitutional right.

In all good conscience, I cannot conclude that the elimination of certain types of guns or the expansion of guns is the answer to our violence issues. If I were capable of making such a determination, I would probably be able to predict the vicissitudes of the stock market. There are too many of us who have very personal reasons to support either side. If it is significantly a matter of prospective then we will continue to position ourselves based on our experiences, rather than on our logic. The Second Amendment needs to be revised and/or amended and made specifically clearer, so there is no question about the rights of individuals to own or not to own guns.