the right to keep and bear arms

     The "right to keep and bear arms" is guaranteed to American citizens by the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The argument starts when people disagree over what precisely is meant by keeping and bearing arms. For the purposes of the second amendment, most liberals decide that "keeping and bearing arms" means the right to have state militias ( like the National Guard ). Their argument is based on American history. The American colonists, before America won its war of independence from Great Britain ( England), had been drilling as soldiers--they called themselves "minutemen". The idea was to be ready to fight with only a minute's notice. They told the British this was in case they needed to fight the Indians. The British did not believe them, and moved on the guns and ammunition the colonists had stored at Lexington and Concord. This is what the famous poem "Paul Revere's Ride" describes, and it began the American Revolution. The colonists defended their stores of arms, and turned back the British army.  The battles of Lexington and Concord were immortalized in another poem, as "the shot heard 'round the world".
     The conservatives, for the purposes of the second amendment, have decided that the law is not to be "interpreted", and means just what it says--the "right to keep and bear arms".
     We, the people, as the authors of our own government, have the right to make and to change our own laws. This is what our elected representatives do for us. We regulate a lot of things, through the governments we have made, and certainly we have the "right" to pass laws regulating gun ownership and use. But wishing or believing doesn't make it so, and this time, the gun advocates are on legal high ground. Our laws are written in English ( or should be--a topic for another day ), and should not be subject to "interpretation", which means, in general, translating from a foreign language. Especially not when some laws are "interpreted", for some purposes, and other laws are taken as written. The idea of written law is important--so important that we should not permit anyone to chip away at it when it suits the purposes of the moment. Written laws mean that none of us are subject to the whims of a king or dictator--only to the laws made by our fellow citizens. The ideal is a "government of laws, not men". We the people made the laws, through our elected legislatures. We have set up courts to administer the laws--not to make laws, or even to decide what a law "means". If we cannot decide what a law "means", we need to urge our legislators to enact a new law--with a plain meaning. If we decide that we want the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution changed, we have to do that ourselves--with a new amendment to the Constitution. If one amendment to the U.S. Constitution can be "interpreted", all of the constitution is in danger of the same. If one law can be "interpreted", they might all be "interpreted"--and the government made by "we the people" won't really exist.