"A Well Regulated Militia ... "

   Those who favor unrestricted possession of any number of guns by any individual, regardless of any association with any organized group -- military or otherwise -- are fond of quoting the Second Amendment whenever any discussion of gun control comes up.
   They focus on the smaller, secondary part of the Constitutional amendment and ignore the definitive first part, which refers to "A well regulated militia," and defines it as "necessary to the security of a free state."
   As for the next part, "the right of the people keep and bear arms," that should be read as supporting the duty of the "free and independent states," (Declaration of Independence) to organize their own state militias, separate from any national army. At the time, state militias were the dominant security forces in America. The federal military did not become a major force until after the Civil War.
   All this history and easy reading of the Constitution does not stop gun lobbyists from being selective in their choice of phrases in order to back up their claim that every individual has a right to own as many weapons as he or she chooses, regardless of any membership in a "well regulated militia."
   " ... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is a good and proper statement designed to prevent a national government from interfering with any state's rights to organize their own "well regulated militia," because such a force is "necessary to the security of a free state."
     Since the early days of American independence, when firearms were mostly muskets, flintlock rifles and individual-shot pistols, technology has advanced such that automatic and semi-automatic weapons are easily available to any individual, whether that person is only an avid collector, a member of a "well regulated militia," or is bent on using said weapon to kill dozens of people in a single episode.
   So what happened to the concept of the "well regulated militia"? It has been replaced by the National Guard, state police, county and local police, all of them carefully monitored and controlled by state and local governments.
   The days of individuals gathering their own automatic weaponry and using them in mass killings of those they dislike should be long past.
   They're not.