Every time a mass shooting happens in America, and before research or analysis for the actual cause can begin, many people and news outlets instantaneously clamor for national gun control as if they are following Rahm Emanuel’s dictum to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Such an approach speaks loudly that the issue is more about control than it is about guns.
As part of gun control advocates’ mantra and a cornerstone of their argument, they claim citizens don’t need assault weapons to hunt or to defend themselves in their homes. Although, it is true citizens can do both of these things without assault weapons, their claim misinterprets the intent of the Second Amendment and the right it was written to protect.
To understand why this claim completely misses the point of the Second Amendment, we must look at what the Second Amendment states and comprehend what it meant to those who wrote it. “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.”
According to George Mason and many other founders, the Militia, to which the Second Amendment refers, consists of “the whole people, except a few public officials” and “of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor.”[1] From this, it is important to understand that the Militia is the entire population of United States’ law abiding citizens. Obviously, in time of need, only able bodied male citizens would be expected to serve, but this does not restrict the right to bear arms to those who do not meet that description. Therefore, every law abiding citizen of the United States has a right to keep and bear arms without infringement from the national, State or local government, because it is a right bestowed by God derived from His commandment to honor life.[2]
The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms was so important that the first US Congress listed it immediately after the other freedoms about which “Congress shall make no law;” freedom of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly and to petition the government.
While the Second Amendment protects every citizen’s right to bear arms, many erroneously interpret the amendment to refer only to personal self-defense or sport. The framers of the Second Amendment recognized and understood the right to personal self-defense, but they had an expanded 
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