“A well-regulated [which in 18th-Century parlance meant, “well armed”] militia being necessary to the security of a free state . . .”
But, it isn’t.
The militia, in the 18th-Century sense (a non-professional volunteer force, as distinct from a National Guard of part-time professional soldiers) has played no part in any American conflict since the Spanish-American War. And yet we remain safe and free.
The FFs were afraid of a large-scale standing professional army, because they still nurtured painful memories of the Redcoats, and feared a professional army being used as a tool of domestic rule, as it often was in contemporary Europe. They were committed to a militia-based defense system, requiring that everybody be allowed to have a musket by the fireplace to use for national defense in the event the limited small-scale standing army proved inadequate to fend off invaders. That was the point of the 2d Am.
But, since then, the U.S. Army has only been used for domestic rule in only a few instances, none of them regrettable – Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement, and that’s all. And in no instance has any militia been used to any good purpose.
At any rate, the FFs never conceived of the militia being used as anything but an arm of the state – certainly, not as a countervailing force against the state. After all, the Constitution authorizes the president to command the militia. The “insurrectionary theory” of the 2d Am. is total bullshit.
And none of this has anything to do with hunting or home defense. The authors of the 2d Am. would have dismissed such concerns as irrelevant.
Federalist 46 addresses this specifically and it plainly assumes that the federal militia regulations have organized the citizens but circumstances have developed that demand the states defend themselves using that organization against the federal standing army:
[INDENT]"Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.[/INDENT]
So Madison said in a nation of 3.5 million total souls, the armed citizen militia would outnumber the standing army by a factor of 17-20 to 1, and when all those “able to bear arms” (who need to borrow one) are factored in, the ratio is about 25 to 1.
Today, those ratios that Madison refer to remain damn close . . . We have 325 million total souls, the active duty and reserve “standing army” military is just under 1% of that, about 2.5 million . . . And to them are “opposed” at least 75 million armed citizens, for a factor of 30 to 1. Hey, we are a bunch of gun nuts!
Madison’s scenario assumes 500,000 men are in the militia and their allegiance is to their home state and they need to fight the federal government . . . But what happens if it is the state government who turns against the people?
Federalist 28 speaks on this:
[INDENT]If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair. [/INDENT]
See, the 2nd Amendment is working fine; all that the 2nd Amendment was ever intended to do is just maintain the people’s numerical superiority over the nation’s armed forces and since the citizens have their own military useful arms in their ***own ***hands, they are prepared in the best possible manner to repel any encroachments upon their rights by those in authority, or just the local ruffians.
The Federalist Papers have no particular significance and quoting them doesn’t prove anything. I don’t care if the omniscient founders didn’t like standing armies, we have one now. To think that the citizens could stand up militarily to government troops is insanity. Maybe in the age of muskets, but not in the days of night vision and drones. The states have their own well regulated militia, it’s called the National Guard. If you’re not serving in the Guard, you have no particular right to any weaponry.
Oh, yes, the assertion that our populace has to remain armed to the teeth in order to maintain our freedom is a complete myth. There are a host of nations right now that have existed as democracies for a very long time, even centuries, that have very few guns in their societies.
And I might add that the Poles and East Germans disposed of their communist overlords without firing a shot. Armed revolutions aren’t that common any more, governments are toppled more by massive protests and/or more simply at the ballot box.
[ol][li]“Well regulated” does not just mean “well armed”, and[/li][li]If you are arguing that we don’t need a militia, you are wrong by definition, because the Constitution says we do. Feel free to disagree - until you got two thirds of Congress plus 38 states to also disagree, you remain wrong.[/ol][/li]Regards,
Shodan
Since when does the Constitution define reality? If the Constitution said that Pi = 3, that wouldn’t make it so, even if two thirds of Congress plus 38 states agreed.
Whether or not we, the United States of America, need a militia is not determined by laws approved 200+ years ago, but by our own assessment of modern military needs.
And I agree with BobLibDem that citizens with rifles are no match for the modern military. It was different when everyone was armed with muzzle loaders. Today, even the most heavily armed civilian compound can fend off the government only because the government isn’t actually trying to kill the citizens.
It ‘proves’, or at least gives insight into their intent and what they were thinking. You ignore it because it doesn’t say what you want it to say, which is that the intent was for a militia and therefore private citizens don’t have a right to keep and bear arms (i.e. it’s not a personal right but just an extension of being in the militia).
Whether a militia is still necessary or not is, of course, debatable. I’d say we DO have such a force, as you indicated, the National Guard as well as the various reserve formations filling that role. Obviously, today, we don’t need to have our militia/reserve forces armed from their own pockets, so for sure that part of the 2nd is an anachronism. Sadly for you, this means nothing, as the personal right to keep and bear arms doesn’t require the militia part, unless one ignores the actual intent of the authors…which is what you and those on your side have been trying to do for ages now. Basically, reinterpret the right out of existence, since you can’t, you know, actually do it using the process we actually have to get rid of amendments. Much easier to just reinterpret it to mean what you want and then bob’s your uncle, no more pesky right.
1- Correct. Well regulated means organized and under control of an authority. Gun nuts have their own meaning which they think is true because it gets repeated.
2- We have a militia. It’s called the National Guard.
You say that, but I’d argue that Iraq, Afghanistan and any number of other insurgencies and asymmetrical wars say otherwise.
Beyond that, I always read the 2nd Amendment as not only being a hedge against tyranny by allowing the common man to be armed as part of what’s called the “unorganized militia”, but that it’s also the Constitutional underpinning of the National Guard (the actual organized militia).
The fact that somewhere around half of the nation’s ground combat power is part of the National Guard is a powerful hedge against tyranny, as there aren’t any guarantees that they’d just blindly agree to be federalized if strange stuff was going down.
So? It doesn’t refer to “the right of that militia to keep and bear arms”. It goes on and on about a well-regulated militia for a while, but for some reason then switches to mentioning the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Not how I would’ve written it, but that’s how it got written.
I’m of the opinion that, facts being stubborn things, I can but look at the bit that mentions “the right of the people” — and try as I might to wish it wasn’t worded that way, in the end I can but shrug and say, “huh; it is worded that way.”
I interpret the right of “the people” to be collective. They have the collective right to be armed via the National Guard, which is today’s “well-regulated militia”.