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> They have electrical equipment that can track or jam civilians phones. A thought popped into my head as I read this, how would the founders apply the right t

> They have electrical equipment that can track or jam civilians phones. A thought popped into my head as I read this, how would the founders apply the right to keep and bear arms today? Would it extend to digital weaponry? Both offensive and defensive?

jcranmer 6y ago
The question is interesting, but any answer is more projection of one's beliefs than any actual grounding in reliable fact. In the context of the 18th century, the forces that a government could bring to bear would either be a centralized army (that would take months to get anywhere in what is now the US, due to its large size), or the very localized militia forces, which would be responsible for local defense until the regular army could arrive. In the specific context of the US, the main threats would have been Indian raids and slave revolts, where immediate action from local militia would have been essential for response. One of the pivotal events of the American Revolution was the British attempt to disarm the Massachusetts local militias, and it's my belief that this is why the Second Amendment is worded the way it is. At the same time, we must recognize that our modern world is alien to those who lived 200 years ago. Services once provided by a collective civic obligation (such as the militias of that period) are now institutions provided by the government or by private individuals under contract of the government. And the realistic threats we face are vastly different. I imagine that given these circumstances, they would take a much narrower view of Second Amendment, casting it more as a right to personal self-defense rather than a right to private military rebellion against the government acting unlawfully.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >casting it more as a right to personal self-defense rather than a right to private military rebellion against the government acting unlawfully. Then again, it might be hard to drum up support for a ban on rebellions, among people who were at the time in the middle of a rebellion.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    I imagine that support would have been quickly reestablished amongst people making the laws once they got a grip on power.
  - saghm 6y ago
    By the time the Bill of Rights was written, the rebellion had been over for years. The American revolution ended in 1783[1], whereas the Bill of Rights wasn't written until 1789[2]. That's not to say they might not have been sympathetic to rebellion still, but they definitely weren't "in the middle of" one. Note that Washington himself literally led the American military against a rebellion during his presidency[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The Confederate States (during the American Civil War) prohibited states from seceding... and this was only a few months after they had seceded from the US!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
beamatronic 6y ago
It would depend on which corporations owned the founders
sneak 6y ago
Traditional arms still work fine for keeping the police at bay, provided you and your friends have enough of them.
hnick 6y ago
Well encryption was already ruled as munitions previously, though restrictions have lapsed a bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... So I assume you have a right to bear encryption and related tools. Thank 2A for your iPhone ;)
dragonwriter 6y ago
> how would the founders apply the right to keep and bear arms today? Not as fundamentally a right to keep countermeasures (whether classical weapons or alternative devices) to militarized standing police forces, because that is completely missing the point of the RKBA. The RKBA exists and was seen as vital to the security of free states because the existence of a universal, well-equipped citizen militia was the thing which made it possible for the citizenry to demand that the government over which they had democratic control not hire large standing internal and external (which ultimately end up as backstop internal) security forces in the first place — because those were seen as fundamentally incompatible with liberty — but instead rely on small cadre forces plus mobilizing the civilian militia for internal and external security. The founders wrote quite a bit based on the dangers of standing armies, but they didn't write a prohibition into th Constitution, just provided the tools that they saw as making standing armies unnecessary. They didn't write as much about standing paramilitary police forces because at the time of the founding those weren't a thing, but pretty much every concern they expressed about standing armies applies to paramilitary police forces, which are just standing armies that are exclusively deployed internally for use against the citizenry, with additional force.

jcranmer 6y ago

The question is interesting, but any answer is more projection of one's beliefs than any actual grounding in reliable fact. In the context of the 18th century, the forces that a government could bring to bear would either be a centralized army (that would take months to get anywhere in what is now the US, due to its large size), or the very localized militia forces, which would be responsible for local defense until the regular army could arrive. In the specific context of the US, the main threats would have been Indian raids and slave revolts, where immediate action from local militia would have been essential for response. One of the pivotal events of the American Revolution was the British attempt to disarm the Massachusetts local militias, and it's my belief that this is why the Second Amendment is worded the way it is. At the same time, we must recognize that our modern world is alien to those who lived 200 years ago. Services once provided by a collective civic obligation (such as the militias of that period) are now institutions provided by the government or by private individuals under contract of the government. And the realistic threats we face are vastly different. I imagine that given these circumstances, they would take a much narrower view of Second Amendment, casting it more as a right to personal self-defense rather than a right to private military rebellion against the government acting unlawfully.

whatshisface 6y ago
>casting it more as a right to personal self-defense rather than a right to private military rebellion against the government acting unlawfully. Then again, it might be hard to drum up support for a ban on rebellions, among people who were at the time in the middle of a rebellion.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  I imagine that support would have been quickly reestablished amongst people making the laws once they got a grip on power.
- saghm 6y ago
  By the time the Bill of Rights was written, the rebellion had been over for years. The American revolution ended in 1783[1], whereas the Bill of Rights wasn't written until 1789[2]. That's not to say they might not have been sympathetic to rebellion still, but they definitely weren't "in the middle of" one. Note that Washington himself literally led the American military against a rebellion during his presidency[3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The Confederate States (during the American Civil War) prohibited states from seceding... and this was only a few months after they had seceded from the US!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

beamatronic 6y ago

It would depend on which corporations owned the founders

sneak 6y ago

Traditional arms still work fine for keeping the police at bay, provided you and your friends have enough of them.

hnick 6y ago

Well encryption was already ruled as munitions previously, though restrictions have lapsed a bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... So I assume you have a right to bear encryption and related tools. Thank 2A for your iPhone ;)

dragonwriter 6y ago

> how would the founders apply the right to keep and bear arms today? Not as fundamentally a right to keep countermeasures (whether classical weapons or alternative devices) to militarized standing police forces, because that is completely missing the point of the RKBA. The RKBA exists and was seen as vital to the security of free states because the existence of a universal, well-equipped citizen militia was the thing which made it possible for the citizenry to demand that the government over which they had democratic control not hire large standing internal and external (which ultimately end up as backstop internal) security forces in the first place — because those were seen as fundamentally incompatible with liberty — but instead rely on small cadre forces plus mobilizing the civilian militia for internal and external security. The founders wrote quite a bit based on the dangers of standing armies, but they didn't write a prohibition into th Constitution, just provided the tools that they saw as making standing armies unnecessary. They didn't write as much about standing paramilitary police forces because at the time of the founding those weren't a thing, but pretty much every concern they expressed about standing armies applies to paramilitary police forces, which are just standing armies that are exclusively deployed internally for use against the citizenry, with additional force.