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The 2nd Amendment is not about defending yourself from burglars -- it's about defending yourself from the government itself. It's essentially the right to revol
by setr 5y ago
The 2nd Amendment is not about defending yourself from burglars -- it's about defending yourself from the government itself. It's essentially the right to revolt.
Of course, it'd be a dark day when a sufficiently large portion of the population feels the need for revolution against the standing government -- but that's the point. The government can't get that bad (as say, a violent dictatorship), because the population is itself armed and able to take back control as necessary. The US in general operates on a distrust of centralized government -- a necessary evil -- and even today it's visible on both fronts of politics; both the defunding of the police on the left, and the populism of the right.
And in that respect, it's important for the population to be equivalently armed as the armed forces that may one day turn inwards -- though by order of numbers, equivalently armed doesn't necessarily require equivalent capability to reign death and destruction -- a thousand men with a pistol will eventually defeat a single man with a nuclear bomb (assuming they're smart enough not to cluster..) -- but to do so, the population must bear arms.
The other side of the problem however is that the US military is becoming continuously more effective at waging war against native populations and poorly armed/trained militia. They may not have succeeded in many of their goals in the Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq, etc wars, but they're definitely getting better at it -- and they're getting a lot of practice.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The 2nd Amendment is not about defending yourself from burglars -- it's about defending yourself from the government itself Kind of, though not in the way its usually sold. > It's essentially the right to revolt. No, its supposed to be a guarantee against needing to revolt by providing a preventative against the situation where the government is able to use the unreadiness of the citizenry as an excuse to establish a large standing armed force for internal and/or external security (the latter being a problem because it, historically, often gets used for the former; purpose built forces for the former purpose were rare at the time of the founding, but the Founders had first-hand experience with external security forces turned to internal security use) with the distinct and separate culture and loyalties from the general population that such standing forces always entail. Since the people as the militia are then expected to be the security services, with only a minimal permanent cadre, there is nothing to have to revolt against. It kind of miserably failed, obviously.