Madison wrote a draft of the Second Amendment. It was accepted by the House of Representatives and was delivered to the Senate during the summer of 1789. Madison’s version of the Second Amendment passed by the House of Representatives reads,
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
The Senate revised the Second Amendment making a grammatical change by using an asyndeton, a linguistic/grammatical device which changes Madison’s clear announcement in the House draft. The Senate’s version, now the Second Amendment reads today:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Before us today are arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment, and how to interpret it. Many Second Amendment rights advocates believe the amendment should be interpreted as James Madison wrote it in the version approved by the House of Representatives in 1789. However, it was changed in the Senate, and next adopted by both houses of Congress and ratified by the States.
The Second Amendment emphasizes “well-regulated militias” and “the security of a free State” become tools in the arsenal to provide such conditions. But in both Madison’s version and the actual Second Amendment, the right of the people remains a right, not a freedom. That right, like rights in the eighteenth century and today, are not absolute; they are not freedoms. In Anglo- American jurisdiction a right can be changed to reflect conditions faced by the free society in which if operates and is enforced.
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