The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it
says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the
difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave
patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to
get Virginia's vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and
James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should
be too. In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South,
they were also called the "slave patrols," and they were
regulated by the states. And slave rebellions were keeping the
slave patrols busy. By the time the Constitution was ratified,
hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the
South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state
militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave
uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in
the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that
police state was the explicit job of the militias. If the anti-
slavery folks in the North had figu