The 2nd Amendment provision about militias wasn't accidental. It was well-understood, the language was plain for the time in which it was written, and the idea that was ratified came directly from some of the state constitutions of the late 18th century.

By the 1790s, the revolutionaries of the 1770s were older men, many of them 2nd and 3rd generation colonists who had grown up with certain ideals. The colonies weren't like the old world. There were no regular troops, or any form of what we would recognize as police. What the colonists had for protection was themselves and their firearms. They organized themselves into militias in order to enact this defense.

The duty of a good citizen in the colonies was to either own (or at least know how to use) firearms as part of the civil militia. It was a civic duty to own a gun, and to participate in the militia. In this way, firearms training and ownership was a civic duty, akin to voting. It wasn't typically considered a personal right, nor was it thought of a collective right.

Prior to the 1800s, there weren't political parties in the United States, and the concept was alien to the colonials. But every colony had local militias. If you lived in Boston in the 1760s, and your name was Sam or John Adams, you were second, maybe even third generation militia members. Civic leaders talked politics, rallied with their fellow citizens, and participated in militia events as good citizens.

Not all militias existed simply as a means for the common defense. The 2012 film "Django Unchained" has characters ponder why slaves didn't simply revolt against their masters, which to a modern ear sounds both disgusting and ponderable. To anyone living in the mid 1800s, the question is nonsensical. Anyone living in the South knew that slave patrols, formed by Southern militias, prevented a mass slave uprising in the South. In order to prevent uprisings, armed Southern militias regularly appeared at plantations, first in South Carolina in 1704, then all throughout the slave colonies to help instill fear in enslaved men and women. Like their Northern counterparts, the slave patrol militias were a civic duty, in place of modern police or army troops.

When British troops arrived in Boston in 1768, the governor demanded that the local militias be disarmed, with their duties taken on by British troops. This happened throughout the colonies in the days leading up to the revolution, and was as relevant an issue to the colonial citizens as tea taxes. The militias did not want to disarm. They saw it as a taking away of their rights as Englishmen, who had the same civic right to firearms as they did. As Englishmen, they had a civic duty and right to firearms. Why would they lose this right as colonists?

In addition, the state militias were a necessary force of order; there was no standing army to keep order, nor any type of police force. Ceding this control was a clear threat to the men of Colonial America.

As is the case with many laws written after a long conflict, the Amendments to the Constitution were written as a way to settle and codify old scores. The British disarmament of the colonists occurred in 1768, yet was still so fresh in the minds of the colonists that 23 years later, enough of them wanted to ensure that their civic rights were protected. In 1791, the 2nd Amendment was written.

The Second Amendment, the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution itself clarified and ended the primary arguments between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The issue of whether or not there would be a standing, Federal army was paramount to the colonists. A standing British Army had taken away their rights and traditions as militia men. To keep the peace, both ways were protected. The Federalists got their strong Federal government with the power of taxation, and eventually raised a standing army. The Anti-Federalists kept the states rights to organize their own forces, maintain their civic institutions, and codify the rights of citizens.

The concept of civic duty is crucial to understanding the principle underlying the Second Amendment. Image a town with a volunteer fire brigade. There is no professional fire-fighters, but local people in the town volunteer, for no money, to fight fires. This is the heart of the idea of civic duty. You become a volunteer fire-fighter to be a good citizen of your town.

The nuance, however, was that many localities required mandatory participation in the local militia. This would be akin to requiring every able-bodied man in your town to participate in the local volunteer fire department. In addition, mandatory participation in the militias also required that militia men purchase their own guns. This is why the Quakers, and a few other groups, looked for exemptions from participating in the state militias. In Pennsylvania, Quakers wanted exceptions to mandatory militia service, and they got them, so that they didn't have to own a gun.

As part of that duty to participate, colonials needed the right to purchase firearms. Those weapons may be personally owned or stored in a local weapons depot. But the right to bear arms, own them, and more, were part and parcel with that civic duty.

So, the passage of the Second Amendment helped assuage the fear the old men of the revolution carried with them, that the British could some day come back to take their guns again. The young men who succeeded them saw things differently. With the advent of the standing US Army and Navy, the militias quickly became quaint institutions of a bygone era.

By the mid 1800s, state militia groups were mostly doing parades, were no longer mandatory in many states, and didn't have a place in civic life. The 3rd generation militia of John Adams that had helped fight the British gave way to a 4th and 5th who had no one to fight. The civic duty of the militia in the former colonies became focused primarily in the Southern states, for the purpose of slave patrols to continue the subjugation and fear of the slave population until the end of the Civil War.

The duties of the colonial Militia had been replaced by police forces, and by the standing Army and Navy. It was only in the Western frontier that the old civic institution of the Militia had meaning.

The necessity of firearms was a condition of frontier life, for the same reasons it had been for the founding fathers; fear of death at the hands of natives, from other settlers, and from wildlife. Firearms were a tool of conquest, of both nature and other people encountered along the way. And it was in this space. It was here that the 2nd Amendment was first reinterpreted. It became a discussion of individual citizen rights to weapons, and the idea of a collective right held by each of the States. These were new ideas, of course. The original intent was clear in 1791. State militias needed people with firearms to participate in the common defense. People needed to own firearms as part of their civic duty for that common defense.

But in the 1800s, in the settled parts of the country, with the militias disappearing, this wasn't the case anymore. The question was really, to those people, "Do I as an individual have a right to own a firearm? Or does that right exist only in the context of a collective right, via the state?" No one bothered with the tradition of belonging to their volunteer (or mandatory) militias. The tradition instead became a question of who actually had the right to those firearms? Was the right to bear arms solely for the purpose of arming and maintaining the State militias, and thus a collective right? Or was it something that an individual US citizen held? The men of the 18th century saw themselves as extensions of their States. The state's right to raise a militia was the same as their right to raise a state army. There was no difference between the two.

But by the 19th century, the citizens saw themselves differently, and had created new civic institutions. So, who had the right to the firearms? If the States and the citizens weren’t one in the same, did the right belong to an individual citizen? Or did remain with the States? In the end, by the end of the 19th century, a new interpretation from that generation appeared, and the roots of our current, endless national argument began. The right to bear arms was simply the right to possess a gun by individuals. By the early 20th century, with the states no longer functional at raising their own armies, the National Guard came into being. The states still had their standing armies, but they were organized at the Federal level. The colonial militias officially ceased to exist, and became a new Federal institution.

Great. What does all that mean?

The question of the Second Amendment isn't just about what the founders intended, because what the founders intended doesn't exist anymore. Militias barely existed in a form that they would recognize just twenty years after the Second Amendment was written.

More importantly, what the founders intended via the Second Amendment differed depending on the founder. The one thing they could agree about was civic duty to the state militias, which required that the citizens have a right to bear arms. Without the state militias, this old colonial civic duty ceased to exist.

And the debate, about collective versus individual rights? That's not the right debate, either. This debate was settled by the people of the 1800s, who reinterpreted the meaning of the Second Amendment to suit their purpose. The right to bear arms, for them, was no longer about the civic duty of militia participation. It was about the need for a frontier person to shoot natives, other settlers, wildlife, and offer their protection in the new lands that were being conquered. The people of the 19th century reinterpreted the Constitution to fit their needs, and the concept of a distinct, individual right to firearms was codified and absorbed into the culture.

In the 20th century, there was a codification of this reinterpretation via the courts. In the early 21st century, this codification has expanded via the US Supreme court. While the militias no longer existed, the 19th century ideal of an individual right to buy, own, and use guns is settled (at least until the next court challenge) in the present here and now. You can disagree with this interpretation, you can try to offer a different interpretation, you can organize legal challenges and write laws on these points, you can organize efforts to repeal or amend the Second Amendment, but as of this writing, the law is clear. Individuals have a right to own firearms in the United States.

But through all of these threads, something of the old world remains, which gets to the heart of our Second Amendment problems in the 21st century. If the original intent of the Second Amendment was, at its heart, an attempt to codify a civic duty of American citizens, then what is the civic duty of 21st century American fire-arms owners?

In other words, in the 21st century, the real debate should be about the civic duty of owning firearms, starting with the simple question, "For gun owners, is there a civic duty for weapons ownership?"

If you truly believe in the founders intent, then the answer is yes, the intent of the Second Amendment was to codify a civic duty. Those duties aren't found in local gun clubs or so-called militia organizations, in their 20th century flavor. Gun ownership was and is a civic duty built into American DNA.

What are your civic responsibilities to your community for owning a firearm? One place that civic duty can be found is in the National Guard, the last vestige of the original civic duty of State militias. Perhaps the remainder of that civic duty is simply to be commonsensical, register your firearms, and forget about trying to own an RPG, or a machine gun that can kill 100 people in 30 seconds, just because it's fun.

What is your responsibility to your community for owning a gun? The founders responsibility for gun ownership was organized, well-regulated militias. What’s the present responsibility?

What all of our polling data and opinions tell us is that, even among gun owners, the idea that the only civic duty a citizen has is to own a gun is nonsensical. Everyone agrees that there is a broader civic duty to gun ownership than simple ownership.

Background checks. Licensing. Being of sound mind. These concepts as a cornerstone to firearms ownership are not controversial to most Americans, including gun owners.

They only become controversial if you allow yourself to be swayed by a lunatic fringe.

Let's shift gears for a moment. We're talking about the civic duties of firearms ownership. Perhaps you find this idea abhorrent. Maybe you honestly want to ban guns, to remove them from US citizens. There are only two routes you can take at this point. You can hope to find a court case that reaches the Supreme Court that reinterprets the Second Amendment away from strict individual gun ownership. So far, all signs show a conservative court that is expanding, not contracting, the individual right to bear arms.

You could also try a Constitutional Amendment that clearly removes this right. However, the likelihood of this occurring, when even common sense gun laws are fought tooth and nail, is minimal.

What purpose does talking about taking away the Second Amendment serve? Talk about banning guns increases gun and ammunition sales. One of the best marketing tools for corporate gun and ammunition makers is to scare their members into thinking someone is taking away the Second Amendment. Feeding that argument feeds gun sales. In fact, while there are progressives that talk about repealing the Second Amendment, the efforts to do so are (thus far) proving fruitless. Should they continue? I’d never tell another citizen not to continue an effort to repeal or replace a law. That’s our right. We have mechanisms for doing this. And while this idea is popular among progressives, and will likely continue to be for the next decades, it isn't moving. Can you honestly say that the Second Amendment will be repealed any time within the next decade?

But the lunatic fringe of the right in this country is baited by this idea into buying more ammunition and guns whenever its raised. The email that a gun owner gets about ‘The ending of the Second Amendment’ doesn’t come from MoveOn.org. That likely comes from the NRA or other corporate gun and ammunition lobby source.

To put it bluntly and plainly, talking about repealing the Second Amendment might feel good, but all it does is help a gun maker earn more money, and leave the status quo intact. The debate about collective vs. individual rights is from the 1800s, and has been decided in favor of individual rights.

The question that everyone can agree on is to ask simply, "Is there a civic duty for owning a weapon?" And once you realize that the answer to this question is yes, and that most people agree that there is a civic duty to owning a gun, then smart policy can flow.

Everything about our policy has to flow from this idea, and is how we start to make smart decisions.

Here's what Cory Booker thinks we should do. This is his plan outlining the civic duty for firearms ownership in 21st century America.

1.) Make background checks universal

2.) Improve mental health and other prohibited purchaser sharing with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System

3.) Tighten anti-trafficking laws

If you think that guns will be banned, completely, in the next 1, 2, 5, or even 20 years, then you're a lunatic. If you think this is the first step towards, "giving in to the gun lobby," or, "having my guns taken away," then you're a lunatic.

It's time to stop letting our critical national debates be handled by lunatics, and by corporate lobbyists. It's time for us to take up the mantle of civics and citizenship

again, beyond our narrow self-interest.

We need to have a real discussion about the civic duty of gun ownership sooner, rather than later. It's time for the grownups to start talking, and more importantly, to take action.

A helpful story from this last year from then Mayor, now Senator, Cory Booker

It's Time to Emphasize Pragmatic and Achievable Gun Law Reform

Thanks to everyone who's Tweeted and shared this on Facebook!

I've cleaned up some bad spelling mistakes, cleaned up a few points and straightened out a few other grammatical errors.

If you have a moment, drop a comment and keep the discussion going!