RetiredUSNChief
Member
The founding fathers in the 2nd amendment, intended for every citizen to bear arms for their own personal home and defense needs, and every citizen to be part of an always ready citizen militia when needed.
Point of fact:
The "founding fathers" did no such thing.
The Bill of Rights was penned in the First Congress (first session) under the new U.S. Constitution and copies sent out to the states to be ratified (second session) and was ratified during the Second Congress (first session). That was when Virginia became the 11th state to ratify on 12/15/1791, meeting the 3/4 requirement.
(There's more history to the remaining states who ratified it, but that's for another time.)
While some members of the First Congress were, in fact, founding fathers, not all of them were. And some of those founding fathers in the First Congress (and outside the First Congress) were very much AGAINST a Bill of Rights for various reasons, such as feeling it wasn't necessary or because they feared enumerating rights would lead to people believing ONLY those enumerated were rights and no others.
It was actually the STATES who pushed for a Bill of Rights during the ratification process for the U.S. Constitution. In fact, at least two of them as I recall made a Bill of Rights conditional on their ratification as a priority during the First Congress...and if the First Congress didn't resolve this, those two states made it plain that they would WITHDRAW from the Union.
Those two states were NC and NY, and one of their major concerns was, in fact, the RKBA. (Pretty ironic that NY placed that much weight on the RKBA, as we know them today.)
So it wasn't the "founding fathers" who were responsible for the Bill of Rights, it was the states forcing the First Congress to take this up for action.
And so ends this bit of historical trivia!