The way I always read it was that the States had their own militias, which could be called into Federal service, but that no small part of the intent of the 2nd Amendment was to ensure that the state militias couldn’t be disarmed by the Federal government, as a check against potential tyranny. The idea being, if the Feds try something too cockeyed, the States will retain the actual force to resist it or to overthrow the Federal government. This makes sense in light of the mistrust and skepticism of the central goverment at the time of the Constitution’s adoption.
I don’t personally know much about whether this was intended as a personal right or a collective right, but I’ll say that a personal right would tend to only reinforce the check against tyranny aspect IMO.
Nowadays, since it’s been found to be a personal right, I think there would be no argument that the state militias should have the same weaponry as the Army (and do, for the most part), but individual people should be legally allowed the same thing that an average soldier might carry, which is also the case today.
I’ve always read the 2nd as guaranteeing a personal right, and I am quite satisfied with us continuing to have this right today. But really, just for my personal freedom to enjoy recreational activities with guns, and perhaps have some to protect myself from individual bad guys who may attack my home or my person while police are unavailable. As for the DoL argument though, I think history and technology has made it moot.
The Founders were mindful of their recent escape from the tyranny of a King, while desiring to refrain from carrying a professional military. So specifically allowing able bodied men to keep and use arms at home, and to be available to form an organized militia at need, made perfect sense at the time.
It also made sense on a practical level. At the time the overwhelming force in a military engagement came from guns. There were short guns, long guns, and really, really big guns. Mount a really big gun on wheels and it was a cannon, or field artillery. Mount some on a ship and you had a naval vessel. Citizens could own small guns and great big guns, if they wished and had enough money. As backup, there were some swords and knives (like bayonets) but these were secondary to guns, guns and guns. There wasn’t much of anything else.
In a guns against guns war, and that was the only kind that mattered by the late 18th century, numbers and tactics are decisive. Both sides had pretty much the same guns. We need to get within a few hundred yards to really have much effect on each other, which limits our field of action. Then we shoot at each other. If we have more guns or bigger guns pointing at you, we win. Unless of course you run around our flank where our big guns aren’t pointing. Then you may win. Basically, that’s how the revolutionaries beat the Redcoats. And I think the Founders had this scenario in mind when they wrote the 2nd. The DoL argument made sense.
But in a modern hypothetical where the country falls apart and the government abrogates the entire Constitution (including but by no means limited to the 2nd Amendment), all the small arms stockpiled in our basements aren’t going to matter diddly squat. You and your boys retreat into the countryside to form your insurgency. You sneak in and attack one or another government installation with your guns. You shoot some government types and steal some stuff. But then you’d better high tail off and hide yourselves, because the helicopter gunships will be right over. This counter-insurgency won’t be fought guns against guns like 1776, but guns and cars/trucks on your side versus helicopters, armored personnel carriers, RPGs, and all the rest of the modern warfare machine. Oh, you may inflict some casualties, but you’re not going to change the outcome. The Guv’mint will hold all the reins of power, make all economic decisions, control the means of production, etc. You will be forced into cowering in some hole. Every time you come out you will lose equipment and personnel. The Guv’mint has manufacturing, all you have is cached arms. As far as the bigger picture goes, you’ll be irrelevant.
If the Guv’mint wants to be ruthless enough it can just overwhelm the town closest to your latest attack, on the theory that you might have supporters or friends and relatives there. It can then issue an announcement that it will shoot one random citizen every 10 minutes until someone, outside or inside, reveals the locations and identities of the insurgents and their weapons.
Check, and mate. Cold dead hands? Careful what you wish for.
Somewhere along the slippery slope I think it is reasonable to go to arms to stop it. I suppose Bubba would want me to help him defend his rocket launcher and I might want hand gunners to help me with my semi-auto firearms. Again I think you are only illustrating why Bill of Rights enthusiasts should oppose all efforts at eroding those rights since it’s clear you think taking a mile inch by inch will be successful. Maybe you are right.
For your last question I don’t have a rocket launcher for anyone to try and take away and I don’t know anyone who does. So that’s one reason at least I’m not fighting in the streets right now. Are you trying to talk me into it?
Let’s imagine that the worst Conspiracy Theory has come true and the UN actually attempts to take over the United States. They are miraculously able to pull out ONE MILLION troops to occupy America.
This is one soldier per 320 people, or about 1 per 350 guns.
How long do you think they’d last?
If they were proportioned by Population, there would be roughly 16,000 foreign troops attempting to occupy my state of Minnesota. I give them a week before they’re no longer an effective force at anything at all, and every goddamned one of them dead or captured in maybe three weeks tops. Assuming any of them made it here in the first place.
That would be about 80,000 in Texas. I give them 3 days before they’re either running or surrendering en-masse.
Oh sure, let’s somehow roll a half a million of them through Texas to “pacify” the place first? Outnumbered 50-1 by a population with a lot of guns and a lot of people with military experience. Yeah, it would be bloody, and it would be brutal, but my bet would be on the people of Texas.
But the breaking point varies from person to person. Would You go to help Bubba, if he would ask? Do You believe the pistol owners would come to Your help? That was My question that You dodged for the third time. But like I said, I never believed You would actually answer it.
You said, You probably would get one if that would be possible. As it is not, it’s obvious that Your ‘rights’ have been violated. Still You do nothing but complain over the internet. Where is Your breaking point? Do You actually have one in real life?
I’m sure that with most ‘tough guys’ the so called breaking point will move one step with every step that government takes. They have already given up rocket launchers and I think in the end they would rather give away their pen knives than face the tanks ( of course provided that they believe it saves their lives ).
( ETA: it’s now 1.23 AM here, so I’m not going to see You response soon if You provide it. )
I am always amused by the positions anti-gun folks contort themselves into on this topic.
They amount to one of these three variations on the same theme:
“Right now I don’t see any cause for a revolution, therefore one will never occur.”
“Even with a just cause, a revolution would be too hard and unlikely to succeed, therefore no one will ever bother.”
“Modern Western society is immune to all the problems that could give rise to a revolution.”
These people then go off into other threads and complain about how the rich and powerful are subverting democracy in America, and taking power away from the people, and make dire predictions about how it may one day be necessary to revolt against the evil rich plutocrats.
I can only assume these people are totally ignorant of history, or willfully blinding themselves to it in order to promote this part of their political agenda.
If 5% of the population were behind a revolution, sure, it wouldn’t succeed. If 50% of the population were behind it, that’s a different story - regardless of how many computer-guided bombs and buggy $200M fighter planes the government has.
Syria may not be paying Lockheed Martin to build them the fanciest, prettiest weapons in the world like we do, but they still have tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, helicopters, etc., and the revolution there still stands some chance of winning. It is impossible to predict what a hypothetical revolution in the US might look like, but whatever it’s origins, it would undoubtedly stand a better chance if ordinary citizens had weapons than if they did not. And if some fraction of the regular military defected and supported the rebels, the situation would not be one-sided at all.
Armies usually don’t fight by equally divvying up their forces. They generally concentrate their power at key points. On the other hand, though, guerilla forces don’t fight by confronting a numerically-superior and better-equipped force head on.
That being said, Minnesota is at low risk because of your chemical weapon capability: you can throw lutefisk at them, and shoot them while they’re vomiting.
No, I’ve been inspired by Der Trihs. It is easier to argue against hypothetical insane people that don’t exist, rather than real people with rational, well-considered positions.
I don’t like the name Bubba. If his name were Alexander, Michael, or Alyson I might help, but I think I would have to be there to judge a number of circumstances. Nobody I know has a rocket launcher so your question is pretty hypothetical. Most firearm owners I know have several types so I think a good number handgun shooters would likely be inclined to help out rifle shooters because a good number of handgun shooter have rifles.
I’m not sure the history on when explosive rockets for civilians were outlawed. They do sound fun to shoot but I have tannerite, and a go to a machine gun shoot where we target sticks of dynamite, so it’s not like I’m lacking for a big bang.
I would say my breaking point is at or before someone tries to take away something that’s mine.
I’ve already agreed you might be right there. The slippery slope is the best strategy for those who want to strip the Bill of Rights. Perhaps those of us who champion personal freedom really should think about coordinating where our breaking point should be. What would you suggest is the best breaking point?
Kable.
Thank You for Your responses, and first I’d like to say that following is not irony, sarcasm or anything like that, 'cause You actually made Me thinking of this quite a lot.
Although I’m not American, I have participated in many gun threads, mostly to taunt people that I have seen as infantile gun fetishists. All those threads have been about mass shootings and left Me very frustrated on their attitudes. But this have been a different case and You have actually opened My eyes in a way.
I have lived My whole life in Finland and in many ways I’m a pretty average guy. But never ever in My life, not even once in My forty+ years, have I thought that the system have treated Me badly or unfair.
To You it obviously is not the case. You don’t trust Your government and in fact You are afraid of it. And I can’t even start to imagine what it is to fear Your own government. It has to be a horrible, horrible situation, imagined or not. ( although I’m not sure how this could go with ‘the best damn country in the world’-thinking that some gun nuts have. )
Like I’ve few times said, I see American concept of freedom and liberty being actually more like anarchy, and You have indeed proved that is the case.
Now in a way I understand these ‘gun nuts’ better and in fact I feel pity for them. But if You really are afraid of Your own government, isn’t the tyranny already there?
One thing to keep in mind is that any sort of hypothetical rebellion or insurrection would be on American soil, against American citizens, and while whatever tyrannical Presidentalissimo type may be ruthless and all that, it’s not a done deal that the military is going to follow orders to use overwhelming force against civilians or that might have serious civilian collateral damage.
Combine that with the fact that like others have said, guerrilla warfare is asymmetrical, and doesn’t require both sides to be armed equally.
I’d bet the best modern parallel to anything like this would be the Troubles in Northern Ireland, except that in our hypothetical, it would be much larger. Really ugly, and really bloody on both sides, and assault rifles, etc… would be VERY handy, especially if they were basically the same thing the Feds used- ammo and spare parts would be more plentiful.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not seeing any possible outcome that actually reverses whatever anti-liberty constraints the government imposed that caused the insurrection in the first place. Arguments about the relative effectiveness of arms aside, the government holds all the economic cards. Any scenario in which the United States of America completely abrogates the social contract we have all agreed to be a part of – the Constitution – and the government actually takes up arms against its own citizens is going to be such a monumental cluster fuck that the 2nd could only be a tiny portion of the motivation.
Really, think about your life (USA residents) and all that entails. Your family, your job, your friends, your home, even your bowling shoes. If the government, tomorrow or next year, found a way to repeal or otherwise quash the 2nd and demanded the immediate surrender of your entire arsenal, would you grab your guns, stuff the kids into the pickup, withdraw all your savings (or do you already store gold?) and run for the hills? And if you would, how many of your friends do you think will join you?
I’m not positing any “taxation without representation” thing here, no “bow down to the new Kenyan overlord”. Business as usual, life goes on, the check’s in the mail, but the government found the balls and the means to simply say “No more guns, big brother knows best”.
If that was the entirety of the situation, I doubt you’ll get very much participation. How many free, moderately happy, moderately prosperous citizens are going to cast off their lives and become outlaws, just to keep their guns? I like my guns, I want to keep my guns, but I don’t like them as much as I like the rest of my life. The government can afford to ignore you and your kind. As long as you hide out, lay low, work piss poor jobs in bumfuck places and don’t display your guns to anyone, you’ll be safe from the jackboots. Hungry, close to homeless, but safe. But as soon as you attack some government types, you’ll get the whack-a-mole treatment. Remember, that citizens against citizens thing cuts both ways. Those law enforcement officers you attacked, or the National Guard armory you raided, are citizens with families too. And, unlike you, those people still have regular jobs and regular lives to protect. I doubt your popularity will be as high as you think.
On the other hand, if something truly monumental happens that changes the game overnight, then guns (yours and mine) will be very useful. After Hurricane Andrew in Miami there were several weeks during which us “armed civilians” were the only force effectively countervailing the looters and other bad guys with little or nothing to lose. It was really, really dark at night, and the debris piles that used to be houses still held some items of value. But we were all quite happy when ‘The Guv’mint’ finally restored order, even though they told us to put our guns away and not carry them around in public any more, and confiscated them from some few who refused. But short of an overwhelming disaster, invasion, plague, or whatever, I cannot imagine any circumstances wherein the whole Constitution and Bill of Rights would be repudiated and the government start actively oppressing the citizenry in such a wholesale manner that these DoL scenarios make any sense.
Like The Troubles, any such would require an enormous ideological motivation. I don’t believe, as stated above, that personal possession of firearms is sufficient sole motivation for a true insurgency movement. And I’m not seeing any other really powerful motivations proposed, not in the USA, not today, or in the realistic future.
See… that’s the thing. I’m pretty sure that if the government literally said “No more guns, big brother knows best”, without going through the trouble to repeal the 2nd Amendment via lawful means, you’d have one hell of an insurrection on your hands.
Not because of guns per se, but because the rule of law just went out the window. I kind of think many (most?) state governments would give the Feds the finger on this- messing with the Constitution without going through the proper legal gymnastics is about as much of a Big Thing as you can get in the US.
It wouldn’t matter if it was the 2nd or the 5th or the 26th- the point is that unilaterally doing away with Constitutional protections or prohibitions is expressly not within the purview of the Federal government, and the States would vigorously resist any attempts, I believe.
The 2nd as I think it was intended, was written to ensure that the States have that militia capacity to resist such usurpation.
The American public doesn’t have the attention span to have an insurrection, and part of that can be be blamed on the media constantly bombarding us with “crisis” after “crisis” after “crisis” to get up in arms about. It’s been two decades of being told that all the Democrats are far right-wing commies bent on destroying America, keeping the voting public in a constant state of angry with stories replaced by other stories at a dizzying rate of speed, and I think the American public is about angried out. Even if such a stupendously unlikely scenario happened it would only be another anger to throw on the pile.
And that’s the point. Such a thing could never occur. There just isn’t a mechanism for it to happen, and in over 200 years nothing like it has. If the President made a proclamation repudiating some (any) part of the Constitution, he would be laughed into a psychological evaluation (straight jacket) and removed from office. If he attempted to exhort the Army into, say, occupying Wyoming, attacking the militias and confiscating their guns, whatever the rationalization, he would be removed and charged with treason. As I said above, there would have to be some huge dislocating event precipitating a kind of ‘martial law’ declaration and the suspension of the Constitution. Something like nuclear weapons detonated in several cities, or an invasion from space or something. Not just the Marxist Hitlerite Kenyan, aided and abetted by the mainstream media and the Hollywood elite, declaring guns to be taboo. And in the case of such an enormous national tragedy, 2nd Amendment rights will be the least of our worries.
Our freedoms, 2nd Amendment or otherwise, aren’t about to succumb to a direct attack by a crazed or crafty despot-to-be. Their removal isn’t happening in large wholesale chunks. Rather, they are being whittled away, bit by bit, with the full complicity of the electorate. (See Patriot Act, for example, or the idiocy that perpetuates the ‘War on Terror’. Or the ‘War on Drugs’, for that matter.) And if enough people become convinced that the 2nd must go – and I mean all those in each state that would have to ratify an amendment to the amendment, then rule of law will have been preserved, the Constitution will remain intact, and the silly DoL justifications will fall away. Because if a super majority want guns to go, they can have their wish. I won’t like it, but it will be quite legal. And that’s the only way it’s going to happen, if it ever happens at all.
Exactly. Incrementalism is the method. This is why the effort is now being made to ban “assault rifles” when anyone with even the most basic knowledge of firearms knows that:
They are used in a very small percentage of crimes.
Any crazy bad guy can kill just as many people with almost any type of firearm, as long as his victims are defenseless.