FSL is a group of concerned citizens who recognize common misconceptions within modern society in the United States. First and foremost, one that is common among people on all sides of the political spectrum is that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants rights (however limited) to the citizenry. This is not correct. The Second Amendment, like the First Amendment, was created to restrict state action. More specifically, the First and Second Amendments were created to prohibit government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be pre-existing.
There was a movement perpetuated by twentieth-century critics of the Second Amendment to alter or, in some cases, to revise history, where the Second Amendment would protect only the “right” of a state to maintain a militia. To some extent, these misguided interpretations live on, despite being thoroughly being discredited numerous times based on plain readings of the text, historical sources, and case law. For one example, see “The Right of the People or the Power of the State: Bearing Arms, Arming Militias, and the Second Amendment” by Stephen P. Halbrook. Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing the option for Heller for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, referred to common law traditions including “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation”