Again though, what is a right held “at large” but not individually? It appears to be legally indistinguishable from a government power. Enumerating government powers is not the purpose of the Bill of Rights.
So in order to convince anyone of this, you’re going to have to explain what a right held collectively actually is that distinguishes it from say, the power to tax or the power to regulate.
The Bill of Rights does indeed enumerate the power of the government to establish a well-regulated militia, and, by inference, to do the regulating. The Militia Acts of 1792 did that - along with requiring the public to buy a product, btw.
Requiring the public to buy a product is illegal under the commerce clause. The commerce clause was not the justification for the Militia Act.
Secondly, you just restated my question in the form of an answer. Why would a government power be enumerated in the Bill of Rights, rather than in the main body of the Constitution?
Finally, why would the ability to raise militias even need to be there? Is the government going to infringe on its own right to raise militias? Perhaps we need an amendment guaranteeing “the people” the right to regulate commerce, lest the government take away it’s own power to do so.
Nobody said so, and it’s puzzling why you think so. The Second Amendment was the reason for it. Your assertion that the Commerce Clause actually *prohibits *the government from doing something is especially counterfactual even for you.
Because the government isn’t the enemy. It’s We the People.
Because it wasn’t in the original text, and George Mason and James Madison thought it needed to be in order to gain ratification, basically. The history is fascinating, if you abandon the notion that they were all anointed by God to write Scripture, instead of ordinary people who didn’t trust each other trying to make an actual, working republic somehow.
No, but a populace that is fed a steady diet of this silliness that the government of/by/for themselves that they chose is actually their enemy might be interested in telling them to fuck off instead of fulfilling their obligations to it. Really, this isn’t all that complicated.
And what sort of body would the people need to enact such a power, assuming they wouldn’t do it themselves somehow you haven’t explained? Would they need to elect somebody to act on their behalf somehow? 
From the Antifederalist #24, written a mere 225 years ago:
When participating in the government meant being a wealthy white male, there might have been *something *of a point to that. 225 years ago, as you helpfully point out.
The notion that a truly democratically-elected government today might actually be the enemy of the people and need to be violently overthrown cannot be taken seriously by a person with a full grip.
Contradiction in terms. Weapon possession of any sort is incompatible with a free society.
Rather than respond point by point to Elvis, let me just see if I’m clear on this: the 2nd amendment to the Bill of Rights enumerates a government power, not an individual right, in contrast to all the other 9 amendments of the Bill of Rights. Am I getting your argument correctly?
I believe the idea was if the government ever stopped being democratically elected, such as if the elected officials suddenly developed megalomania and declared indefinite martial law, or if the military decided to start deposing presidents.
As we’ve seen lately though in places like Venezuela and Iran, a democracy can still be tyranny if there are no boundaries to the government’s power. Or the majority can be manipulated into favoring the suppression of a minority. Those situations provoke armed resistance.
And that’s where the “taking the possibility seriously” problem comes into it.
IOW, really, dude?
adaher, no doubt Venezuela and Iran would be models of polite democracy if only everyone had a sidearm, huh? 
You really do need to actually read the Constitution, and its history, sometime, btw.
I am less sanguine than you that somehow our “culture of democracy” makes an undemocratic regime unthinkable. Or rather, I think widespread civilian ownership of weapons is a better guarantee than “parchment laws”. There has been no shortage of arrogant bastards in the federal, state and local governments of the USA, who would be tin-horn tyrants if they thought they could get away with ruling by decree.
Okay, then, playing along: What historical precedent can you point to where extensive/universal ownership of light arms by a population has preserved democracy against tyrannical attack, instead of becoming mob rule itself? Any? Ever?
The battles of Lexington and Concord. British troops, once again, attempted to disarm the British colonists. The extensive/universal ownership of light arms by the colonists allowed the colonists to drive the British regulars back to Boston. And the revolution was on.
That’s a bit like asking when an armed police force has ever managed to stop murders and rapes from happening.
The right to self-defense is not dependent on it being foolproof, or even effective, anymore than the right to free speech is dependent on you having something worthwhile to say. rights don’t need justification, restrictions do.
Also, there have been some local cases where armed citizens have defeated corrupt local governments. The South through most of our history hasn’t been democratic in the least. It would be generous to even call what existed before the civil rights era authoritarian democracy. We know that blacks were oppressed horribly, but it’s not like whites had much freedom either, unless they supported the way things were, and that included supporting their local and state strongmen, who fixed elections and intimidated voters and punished enemies in ways that would make Hugo Chavez blush. Every once in awhile, these bosses would piss off too many people and get into violent trouble.
Citizens of McMinn County had long been concerned about political corruption and possible election fraud.[5] The U.S. Department of Justice had investigated allegations of electoral fraud in 1940, 1942, and 1944, but had not taken action.[5][6] In 1936 the system descended upon McMinn County in the person of one Paul Cantrell, the Democratic candidate for sheriff. Cantrell, who came from a family of money and influence in nearby Etowah, tied his campaign closely to the popularity of the Roosevelt administration and rode FDR’s coattails to victory over his Republican opponent. Paul Cantrell was elected sheriff in the 1936, 1938, and 1940 elections, and was elected to the state senate in 1942 and 1944, while his former deputy, Pat Mansfield, was elected sheriff.[5][6] A state law enacted in 1941 had reduced local political opposition by reducing the number of voting precincts from 23 to 12 and reducing the number of justices of the peace from fourteen to seven (including four “Cantrell men”).[5] The sheriff and his deputies worked under a fee system whereby they received money for every person they booked, incarcerated, and released; the more arrests, the more money they made.[5] Buses passing through the county were often pulled over and the passengers were randomly ticketed for drunkenness, whether guilty or not.[5]
In the August 1946 election, Paul Cantrell was once again a candidate for sheriff, while Pat Mansfield sought the state senate seat.[5] After World War II ended, some 3,000 military veterans (constituting about 10 percent of the county population) had returned to McMinn County. Some of the returning veterans resolved to challenge Cantrell’s political control by fielding their own nonpartisan candidates and working for a fraud-free election.[5] They called themselves the GI Non-Partisan League.[7] Veteran Bill White described the veterans’ motivation:
There were several beer joints and honky-tonks around Athens; we were pretty wild; we started having trouble with the law enforcement at that time because they started making a habit of picking up GIs and fining them heavily for most anything—they were kind of making a racket out of it. After long hard years of service—most of us were hard-core veterans of World War II—we were used to drinking our liquor and our beer without being molested. When these things happened, the GIs got madder—the more GIs they arrested, the more they beat up, the madder we got ...[5]
Combat veteran Knox Henry stood as candidate for sheriff in opposition to Cantrell.[5] In advertisements and speeches, the GI candidates promised an honest ballot count and reform of county government. At a rally, a GI speaker said,
The principles that we fought for in this past war do not exist in McMinn County. We fought for democracy because we believe in democracy but not the form we live under in this county[8]
Polls for the county election opened August 1, 1946. About 200 armed deputies turned out to patrol the precincts—the normal complement of 15 deputies significantly augmented by reinforcements from other counties. A number of conflicts arose before the polls closed, the most serious of which was when a black man, Tom Gillespie, was assaulted by officers after casting his vote. Deputy C.M. Wise shot and wounded him in the back while he was trying escape from the officers. C.M. Wise was later sentenced to 1–3 years in prison, being the only person to face charges from the events of August 1–2, 1946.[7]
As the polls closed, deputies seized ballot boxes and took them to the jail. Opposition veterans responded by arming themselves and marching there. Some of them had raided the National Guard Armory, obtaining arms and ammunition.[9] Estimates of the number of veterans besieging the jail vary from several hundred[9] to as high as 2,000.[7]
When the men reached the jail, it was barricaded and manned by 55 deputies. The veterans demanded the ballot boxes but were refused. They then opened fire on the jail, initiating a battle that lasted several hours by some accounts,[7][9] considerably less by others.[10] In the end, the door of the jail was dynamited and breached. The barricaded deputies—some with injuries—surrendered, and the ballot boxes were recovered.
During the fight at the jail, rioting had broken out in Athens, mainly targeting police cars.[7][9] This continued even after the ballot boxes were recovered, but subsided by morning.[10]
Wrong. If it did, you’d at least be able to point to an example where it came close to happening, or was on the way to happening, or in fact anything at all. If not, then it’s fair to dismiss the assertion as entirely imaginary, hmm? The incident you’ve posted above is about a bunch of local yahoos (did you realize that many Southern LEO’s were in the Klan?) who somehow got badges and were acting on their own, *not *on orders from DC or anyone in higher authority.
The topic is the assertion **Lumpy **has made (and he’s not alone, it’s a common one) that widespread gun ownership *prevents tyranny. *If you can’t point to anything in the real world that supports that claim, please do not pretend the topic is something else.
Actually, to retrieve their own powder supplies from an area already held by the rebels, who generally were in favor of remaining loyal British subjects once this taxation foolishness was over with.
The British army was as effective as the later Union Army in wholesale freeing of slaves, btw. Any who escaped to their lines would not be returned, and any of their children born in British-held areas were free.
The founders clearly wanted an armed citizenry to be a check on tyranny. The only dispute is whether they wanted it to be as individuals owning arms of their own volition, or doing so as part of state militias. Either way though, it’s a check on the federal government.
But it was ostensibly a democratic government that wasn’t, and the feds at the time had little interest in interfering in local elections, no matter how corrupt. It was an armed citizenry that corrected that problem. Obviously trying to extend that to the federal level is another matter entirely. But i do think an armed citizenry helps. If our own troops are ordered to fire on us, I think their already conflicted emotions will be further tipped by the fact that they won’t be just mowing down defenseless people. Don’t wanna do it + afraid to do it, means “we win!”
The topic is actually whether the insurrectionary theory is nonsense. This thread could have been ended on the first page simply by quoting the founders on the subject.
Whether or not it would actually work is another debate, and an academic one. We do not need to prove a citizen rebellion would succeed to justify an armed citizenry.
The evidence is, once again and unsurprisingly, to the contrary.
Well, yes, it could have. Not quite the way you think or wish, though.
Only if you want your claim that it would not to be laughed at, and only if you want to ignore all the real-world effects.