An old Greek word, ecclesia,
is often translated as church,
but could also be thought of as a civilization
acting civilly,
as a citizenry
acting as responsible citizens.

The noun side of Ecclesia
casts residents as consumers
of democratic and economic cooperative systems,
while the verb side
speaks of residents as producers of democracy
and economically cooperative relationships,
communications,
transactions,
economic investments in and for each other.

I believe it is a stretch of original Intent
to believe that democratic constitutions
derived from and of and for a democratic citizenry,
would not also have this consumer-producer meaning
when speaking of citizens,
human rights and responsibilities,
of our individual and shared cooperative balance
of co-empowering authorities.

A democracy’s citizen
is a consumer of each state’s cooperative ecopolitical networks
but this is not sufficient to grasp both sides
of the pre- and post-revolutionary intent
when legislating of, by, and for us cooperatively acting citizens,
producing decisions and choices,
deliberations and citizen debates,
internally oppositional, and often contentious,
but never disloyal to our underlying democratic cooperative project,
loyal producers of co-regenerative intent,
benign, not parasitic,
available to have our minds preyed upon
but not available to predation,
rabid competitions,
assault on our bodies.

Physical and verbal violence to inflict retributive terror
are not within our democratic arsenal of citizenship,
acting as a body of citizens,
and as individual citizen-productive bodies.

“A well regulated militia
being necessary to the security of the state,
the right of the people [ecclesia]
to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed.”

In U.S. history,
this language, penned by James Madison,
was in the context of protecting and asserting State Rights
of self-preservation
for democratic self-optimizing purpose.

In earlier English history,
this right of armed self-defense
roots back toward ancient cultures
of natural-spiritual individual rights
to respond to predators
intruding on personal/familial, tribal space
with rapacious intent
to kill or maim,
to inflict pain,
sometimes sexual, sometimes not,
to capture and directly enslave
or capture and sell people not recognized as ecclesia
so they could be sold as a capitalist cash crop,
perhaps way back, captured as an edible,
to respond to nutritionally urgent needs,
but probably not first preferences.

Armaments, during these originating roots of natural rights
of self-defense
probably began with sticks and stones,
then knives and spears,
then boomerangs and bows with arrows.

All fascinating original intent history,
yet little, if any, of this original ecclesia intent
of local and state militias preserving armed rights
to protect against individual predators,
and other organized citizen predators,
acting in an extremely Originally UnIntended
aggressive way,
as if mutual competitors,
rather than mutual ecopolitical ecclesia cooperators,
suggests the NRA’s legislative agenda
is anything less or more than hate-mongering
organized crimes against a strong healthy natural-spiritual right
of healthy robust democratic citizens
to defend ourselves
against those who would act against,
compete against
healthy citizen consumers of democratic process
acting as cooperative producers of robust ecclesia,
cooperative ecopolitical co-loyalists,
co-deliberators,
ecotherapeutic citizens of Earth,
and also, by the way,
cooperatively self-regulating States,
and democratic nations.

The NRA’s ecopolitical agenda
has nothing to do with the U.S. Bill of Rights
including the Second Amendment.

It has everything to do with growing anti-ecclesia,
antiAmerican
anti-social pathologies,
rather than robust natural-spiritual rights
of democracy producing sacred bodies
of cooperativity,
rather than mutual threat
and unnecessary intimidation.

If the Second Amendment had originally said:

A well-regulated slave market
being necessary to the security of the capitalist state,
the right of the people
[especially slave owners–and explicitly not including slaves themselves]
to keep and bear arms
should not be infringed
[except for non-ecclesia, wild indians and black/red slaves].
Does this not look and sound and smell
much closer to the NRA’s legislative agenda
of self-preserving supremacy
and support for uncontrolled ballistics profiteering,
than the historical articulation
penned by James Madison?

It is not controlling the rights of individual citizens
to fire ballistics at each other,
and to support those who have grown rich
through this anti-democratic corruption,
that is a violation of our Bill of Rights
to act as producers of active cooperative democracy
so much as the absence of control
over antisocial consumers and producers of hatred,
including first and front and center
the NRA of unAmerican organized crimes
against healthy-wealthy
nature-spirit cooperators.

Natural rights to bear arms against other people,
as compared to natural rights to eat, to hunt,
are cooperatively normed,
rather than competitively mediated,
especially within a democratic-intending polity.

Arms, in this historical context,
are tools for self-defense
which, in a democracy,
as codified in the US First Amendment,
begin with the right to cooperatively communicate,
to speak and listen with and among each other,
without need to fear being fired upon.

These natural-spiritual roots to self-defense
and citizenry optimization
are pre-linguistic,
so all the more pre-rifle dis-associations,
pre-ballistics of any kind.

Our Second Amendment,
of and for whom we are becoming
as a democratic-producing people
with natural rights
of cooperative self-regeneration,
to normally speak and listen together WinWin,
and abnormally compete against each other
WinLose,
as WinLose un-democratically provoked
through acts of violence,
armed fear-mongering.

We are WinWin people
disarmed by candor and curiosity
for Original Ecclesial Intent.