# The Second Amendment and control of weapons that aren't firearms

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-second-amendment-and-control-of-weapons-that-arent-firearms/650898>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 20, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-second-amendment-and-control-of-weapons-that-arent-firearms/650898 "2013-02-20T20:08:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-second-amendment-and-control-of-weapons-that-arent-firearms/650898/141 "2013-03-08T16:32:52Z")

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> [@SirGalahad](#):
>
> Freedom of speech applies to the spoken word, creating art and also to the printed or posted (internet) word. It protects ideas, not pages. Now, freedom of the press, which the First Amendment specifies, seems to protect pages, the pages of the news. But now the news is on the internet. That right, too, protects ideas. The press are the newsmen, the publishers, and the Freedom of the Press also protects the readers of the news … it’s still about ideas.
> 
> The 2nd Amendment isn’t about ideas. It’s exactly about tools. Arms (at the time of the publishing of the Bill of Rights) were Muskets, blunderbusses, and bayonets. Muskets are firearms, and riflemen won our independence. Without the rifles, the ideas were academic, with them, they were made real. Amendment 2 is about arms. Arms don’t make the right easier to enforce, the Right is directly about arms. We are the militia … we are The People. But, it’s about the arms.

Maybe this was the case during the revolution and I agree that we would have been about as successful in the revolution with bow and arrow as the native americans were against us later on. This doesn’t negate the fact that contrary to popular rhetoric that the second amendment is the one that protects all the rest, the actual history of gun rights show that it is the first amendment that has historically protected the second amendment. Just ask the NRA lobbyists.

If we are facing true tyranny, no personal arsenals will even be sufficient to fight against an armored division or a B2 bomber. What protects us from tyranny isn’t my AR-15, its folks who constantly stand up to even the mildest hints of tyranny. Heck, the Republican party has been able to fabricate tyranny out of thin air for the last 4+ years.

Gun ownership as a bulwark against tyranny is paranoia. If tyranny ever comes it will be with the full throated support of the majority of Americans (they may have been tricked into that support, as it was with the invasion of Iraq), it will never be at the point of a gun.

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