Most of the argument surrounding gun control laws and gun rights argues about the effectiveness of civilian owned guns as a deterrent to crime and the effectiveness of gun control laws in reducing gun violence. The Second Amendment of the Constitution, where the right to bear arms finds its home in the legal world, seems to address a different context.
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."
Naturally, we couldn't expect the authors of the Bill of Rights to address the modern context in which prevalent gun violence can be a significant concern for the average law-abiding citizen in many urban neighborhoods. So what was their concern? It is that concern, independent of the problems of prevalent gun violence that we face today, that I would like to discuss.
The text of the second amendment addresses not the safety of individuals from criminals, but rather the security of a free State. It appears that the intentions of the authors were to protect the State from outside aggressors (as in foreign attackers) but also to protect the State from a tyrannical government in order for the state to remain free. The context of the time just after the Revolutionary war lends itself to this interpretation. It makes sense too: a well-regulated militia of ordinary arms-bearing citizens would have played a key role in keeping a state free and democratic.
In the case that one adopts the interpretation that the Second Amendment refers singly to the protection of a free State against outside aggressors, one could argue that the modern military makes such a militia unnecessary and frankly impractical. A counterargument to that could very well be that just as civilians bearing arms was necessary then to protect from outside aggressors, today civilians bearing arms is necessary to protect against a different enemy (the perpetrators of violent crime) against which the government's armed forces and law enforcement cannot respond adequately.
(Regarding the gun violence argument , comprehensive studies and research reveals that increased legal civilian gun ownership does not increase gun violence and if anything can decrease the crime rate. Well-publicized mass gun training programs have significantly reduced violent crime rates in the area in question.)
Alternately, another interpretation supports a reading that would uphold the right of civilians to own and carry guns in order to protect against the possibility of governmental tyranny, perhaps through the pretext of a threat to national security and then the establishment of military law and then the long-term extension of governmental power at the expense of individual rights... etc.
Should civilians have the right to keep and bear arms in order to protect against the eventuality of a 'hostile' government? On the other hand, should the government have a monopoly on firearms and the power to decide who wields them? If democracy of this nation depends on the government deriving its powers from the people, shouldn't we maintain a situation in which protests cannot be met brutally without retaliation?
I know that the idea of a right to bear arms to fight the government seems not only far fetched but drastic in this day and age, but should we allow the rights that at one time were essential to the protection of democracy to be slowly abridged because political stability has convinced us that such necessities are limited to the 18th century?