Senate Website Gets Second Amendment Wrong

A Senate.gov web page covering the Constitution gets the scope of the Second Amendment wrong, telling readers that it is not clear whether the amendment protects an individual right or a collective right. 

Here is what the Senate’s web page on the Constitution says about the Second Amendment: “Whether this provision protects the individual’s right to own firearms or whether it deals only with the collective right of the people to arm and maintain a militia has long been debated.”

This is simply not true on at least two levels. 

Number one, the scope of the Second Amendment has not been seriously questioned until Alisky-minded radicals isolated it from among the other amendments in the Bill of Rights and began attacking it. Before that it was taken for granted that the scope of the Second Amendment was the same as the scope of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and so on. 

Remember, the Bill of Rights protects individual, “unalienable rights” with which we were “endowed” by our Creator.

Secondly, and confirming these things, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment is an individual right twice in the last five years. 

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) they ruled: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” In McDonald v. Chicago (2010) Associate Justice Samuel Alito referenced the Heller decision to make the same point in a different but equally clear manner: “In Heller, we held that individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right.”

How is that Wikipedia has incorporated the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual right but a U.S. Senate website has not?

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