-By Warner Todd Huston
A textbook in Texas has been discovered teaching that Americans have no individual right to keep and bear arms, essentially telling kids that only the military–or an organized militia–can have arms under the Constitution.
Thanks to TheBlaze, a school book in Denton, Texas has been found giving kids an incomplete definition of the Second Amendment. Worse, this is a textbook used by advanced placement students, supposedly the best educated kids.
The book in question is titled, United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination and is the principal book used to study for advanced US history classes.
Here is what the textbook says of the Second Amendment:
Second Amendment: The people have the right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.
Not only is this an incomplete description of the amendment, but it doesn’t take into account recent Supreme Court rulings that make the Second an individual right, nor does it include the important passage, “shall not be infringed.”
A page from the textbook incorrectly describing the Second Amendment
As the textbook clearly reads, it makes the right to bear arms contingent on being in a state militia. But that isn’t the case. It has become pretty well accepted even in this day of anti-gun nuts that the right to bear arms is not strictly relegated to being in a state militia.
As the actual, full amendment reads:
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 fact, the comma in that sentence is the most important part. It separates the militia clause from the rights clause making them co-equal, not one contingent upon the other. But the most important part is the last four words. It does NOT say “shall not be infringed unless you aren’t in a militia.”
It says “shall not” period.
This wasn’t the only textbook that teaches kids that only the militia is allowed to have arms.
TheBlaze found another widely adopted textbook that essentially says the same thing, that only people in the militia can have guns.
This is simply a lie. The right to bear arms is an individual’s right, not a collective right only of the militia.
Our schools are failing us, folks. Not only that but our schools–even those in red states–are attempting to rewrite our history and teach kids what these liberals would rather our history be, not what it actually is.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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