Regarding Rick Devore’s letter (“Not about ‘democide’”, May 15) which asks where one might get the idea that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to fight one’s own government, I can answer his question in three words — The Revolutionay War.

In his view, which is popular among opponents of the Second Amendment, only those who belong to a militia are allowed to have guns. And since there really is no official militia, then the de facto meaning is that nobody but those who belong to some government agency are allowed to have guns. So the Second Amendment really means the opposite of what it says.

Why not focus on the word “infringe” instead of “militia”? The Second Amendment did not grant anybody a right to do anything. It prevents Congress, as all the other 12 articles of the Bill of Rights did, from passing legislation that infringes on a right that already existed. That’s what “shall not be infringed” means.

The essence of the Militia Act of 1792 is that all white men between 18 and 45 years old are required to serve in the militia. The key concept was that every free man of a reasonable war-fighting age was automatically considered to be in the militia.

In other words, the right to bear arms belonged to everybody, not some exclusive group.