An often overlooked phrase in the Second Amendment protects Gov. Rick Perry’s right to militarize his southern border with National Guard troops.
Here’s the complete text of the Second Amendment (emphasis mine):
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.
In other words, this amendment was enacted to ensure the right of the individual states to protect their sovereign liberty and their sovereign borders with their own armed forces.
It is historically significant that the Second Amendment was enacted two years after the ratification of the original Constitution, in which “We the People” granted to the central government the authority to form a standing military.
The Founders recognized that a standing army under the control of the central government was not sufficient to ensure the protection of the safety and security of the individual states, and in fact could easily pose a threat to their liberty.
Based on their recent experience with the Crown, the grave concern of the Founders was a disarmed people and a military exclusively under the control of an all-powerful central government. The Second Amendment was written in order to provide an additional check on tyranny by protecting the right of every citizen in every state in America to keep - that is, to own - and to bear - that is, to carry around - weapons for their own defense.
The reason every citizen was to be armed was not just for self-protection but so that each individual state could form a “well-regulated militia” for its own defense. Because every citizen in a state possessed firearms, they could be brought together to form military units which were designed to protect the liberty of their own individual states.
In other words, the purpose of the Second Amendment was to enable each sovereign state, each one of the individual but united States, to protect itself from threats to its borders.
This included possible threats from our own central government - the Founders were all too aware of the tyrannical threat that could in time come from the government they themselves had created - and possible threats from neighboring states and neighboring powers.
The point here is that the specific goal of the Second Amendment was to make it abundantly clear that every state has the right to organize a militarized force to protect the sovereign inviolability of its own borders.
It is true that the southern border of Texas, its border with Mexico, is an international border. But it is also a state border. It’s not only the southern border of the United States, it is the southern border of the state of Texas.
That border is currently being overrun by illegal aliens who have no right whatsoever to be in this country. The state of Texas is being invaded by hundreds of thousands of criminal trespassers, and our central government is now aiding and abetting this mass infiltration rather than stemming the tide.
These criminal trespassers include murder-minded drug cartel thugs and human traffickers. They pose a constant threat to the public safety of the state of Texas.
In other words, they pose a clear and present danger to the “security of a free State.” What can a governor do about it under our Constitution? He can deploy his “well-regulated militia” to neutralize the threat to the “security of (his) free State.”
Constitutionally, Gov. Perry is perfectly free to militarize the southern border of his state with his armed and ready National Guard troops. In fact, that’s what they are there for. You could look it up.
