In order to truly grasp the Founding Fathers intentions’ for the Second Amendment, one must decipher what effect the wording would have had during the late 1700’s. Historically, the phrase that has caused much of the controversy is the first clause “A well regulated militia.” In today’s society, we understand a militia to be an organization of the government most closely related to our current National Guard. However, in the Founding Fathers’ era the constitution and purpose of militias was very different, the key difference being who made up the militia. George Mason, considered the father of the Bill of Rights, clearly stated the Founding Fathers’ perspective of the militia in responding to the question, “What is the militia?” With a strong and direct proclamation stating “[the militia] is the whole people” (http://gunnerynetwork.com/files/historic.html). Another Founder, Richard Henry Lee, shared similar views of the militia as a conduit for the citizens the Founding Fathers intended to endow with the right to keep and bear arms through the Second Amendment. Lee felt that “a militia when properly formed is in fact the people themselves…and include all men capable of bearing arms…to preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always bear arms” (http://christianparty.net/secondamendment.html). A militia during the time when the Second Amendment was written was considered to encompass the whole of the citizenry of the United States. The Founding Fathers felt that by granting the right to “keep and bear arms” to “a well-regulated militia” they would not only place the Amendment out of reach for the Federal Government, but also protect their primary goal of granting every individual citizen the right to bear arms.

The Federalist Papers were written in an attempt to “sell” the Founding Fathers’ new form of government to the American citizens. By examining the writing of Madison and Hamilton expressing the feelings of the Founding Fathers on the role of weapons for self-defense and protection against tyrannical governments, it reinforces that the Founding Fathers intended every citizen’s right to bear arms to function as an irreplaceable check on governmental power. In Federalist Paper No. 46, Madison praises the Constitution for “preserving the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over people of almost every other nation” (Madison 46). Evid

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