In large part, the defense of the second amendment seems to lean towards personal defense, hunting and sport shooting.  Although all of those ideas are indeed inherently protected under the "right to bear arms," the bigger point is overlooked.

Our Founding Fathers penned the Bill Of Rights under a singular notion:  these Constitutional Amendments are to protect the citizens from a power hungry government.  And the Second Amendment makes legal for the American Citizens to keep and bear arms as a specific deterrent against a tyrannical government.  Where you have a government who fears its citizens, you have liberty.  When you have the exact opposite, you have tyranny.

I encourage you to read the following essay by Lawrence Hunter (yes, his name is "Hunter") from Forbes magazine.  Its the most concise and insightful essay on this topic I've read during my research.  Some excerpts:

"It is time the critics of the Second Amendment put up and repeal it, or shut up about violating it.  Their efforts to disarm and short-arm Americans violate the U.S. Constitution in Merriam Webster’s first sense of the term—to “disregard” it.

Hard cases make bad law, which is why they are reserved for the Constitution, not left to the caprice of legislatures, the sophistry and casuistry of judges or the despotic rule making of the chief executive and his bureaucracy.  And make no mistake, guns pose one of the hardest cases a free people confronts in the 21st century, a test of whether that people cherishes liberty above tyranny, values individual sovereignty above dependency on the state, and whether they dare any longer to live free.

A people cannot simultaneously live free and be bound to any human master or man-made institution, especially to politicians, judges, bureaucrats and faceless government agencies.  The Second Amendment along with the other nine amendments of the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent individuals’ enslavement to government, not just to guarantee people the right to hunt squirrels or sport shoot at targets, nor was it included in the Bill of Rights just to guarantee individuals the right to defend themselves against robbers, rapers and lunatics, or to make sure the states could raise a militia quick, on the cheap to defend against a foreign invader or domestic unrest.

The Second Amendment was designed to ensure that individuals retained the right and means to defend themselves against any illegitimate attempt to do them harm, be it an attempt by a private outlaw or government agents violating their trust under the color of law.  The Second Amendment was meant to guarantee individuals the right to protect themselves against government as much as against private bad guys and gangs.

That is why the gun grabbers’ assault on firearms is not only, not even primarily an attack merely on the means of self-defense but more fundamentally, the gun grabbers are engaged in a blatant attack on the very legitimacy of self-defense itself.  It’s not really about the guns; it is about the government’s ability to demand submission of the people.  Gun control is part and parcel of the ongoing collectivist effort to eviscerate individual sovereignty and replace it with dependence upon and allegiance to the state. "

What many fail to Recognize is that homicide cases that were carried out by a gun-wielding perpetrator are actually far less common than other types of death:


Are we to take away knives because people stab each other? or how about cars because we run into each other and kill someone in the process? Or doctors because they made a mistake while operating on us? the answer is simply no. All of these things do more countless times more good than they do harm. The problem is that you don't hear about when someone successfully defends his/her spouse, children and property from a break-in because they had a firearm.

I believe that the right to  bear arms is one of the most prolific amendments of the constitution, and also one that makes our country what it is today.