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I feel like its time we had a discussion about a now very topical subject. Our rights. Specifically as laid out in the Bill of Rights. Beautiful, God-given rights that would have been lost long ago without the Second Amendment.

Our founders put the right to bear arms in the number two spot for a very good reason. It was their way of saying, Here are your top five God-given rights, and here is how you defend them.

With very serious enemies of those rights and specifically the right to bear arms, in the White House the Second Amendment is once again a very hot topic of conversation. As such, it needs to be understood as thoroughly as possibly. What does it mean sentence by sentence? Lets find out:

A well-regulated militia: This has been interpreted to mean different things depending on the view of the interpreter. The Left wants it to mean the National Guard or similar force. The Right says it means the people. George Mason of Virginia famously said, What is the militia? It is the whole of the people. Those words are used to support the people argument.

However, if you read the Federalist Papers and the letters of the Founders you come to a slightly different meaning.

In essays 27 through 29 of the Federalist Papers (written by Alexander Hamilton), you clearly see that the term, a well-regulated militia, means a standing professional army. An army in the control of the central or federal government.

It is important to know that the citizens of the new United States of America had a very strong aversion to the government having a professional army. Such armies have been used throughout history to subjugate societies everywhere. The people of the USA did not want that.

This desire creates a problem because a nation, any nation, absolutely needs a military to remain free and sovereign.

That brings us to the second portion of the sentence, being necessary to the security of a free state,

Hamilton and Madison were attempting to convince the people of the necessity and assure them it could be done without threat of subjugation.

If it were to be written in the common speech of today, we might say it like this: A professional military, including a Navy, is necessary for the security of a free nation; however, because it is a danger to allow the government to have that military and navy, every citizen must be armed and trained if possible.

They wrote it as a constitutional right.

Far too often these days, we tend to use the term self-defense and that allows the enemies of the Constitution to claim its not necessary, because the police protect us. The police and that very military.

As citizens of our country, we are always ready to respond in a minute, (Minute men and women) are the militia in waiting. We are not a well-regulated militia. We are armed because of the inherent danger of that very necessary well-regulated militia. It really is very simple and straight forward.

I read one book of letters from the Revolutionary War period and do not remember the name of the writer, but he stated The Second Amendment allowed the average citizen to remain armed in a fashion equal to or in excess of the common soldier. A fairly high percentage of the people that owned their own firearms had rifles.

Today we call them Kentucky rifles, though most were made in Pennsylvania. Accurate to sometimes 300 or 400 yards. The weapon used by military was a musket, unrifled, and very inaccurate.

When Biden says we dont need AR-15s for self-defense, hes right. We do, however, need them to remain armed equal to or in excess of the common soldier, or as close as possible on a budget. We need them to prevent the subjugation of ourselves.

When we speak of the Second Amendment we need to speak of it in those terms, the ability to defend our freedom. Stopping a burglar or killing a trophy elk are just very nice bonuses.

In the future when you hear Biden or Harris say that you dont need an AR-15 to hunt deer understand its a distraction. Dont fall for it.

Rusty Rogers is a resident of Saratoga who pens a weekly article for the Rawlins Times.

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The Second Amendment | Opinion | wyomingnews.com - Wyoming Tribune