General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "We stop being something to be proud of when we love our guns more than we love our children" [View all]Tommy_Carcetti
(43,181 posts)If you believe the 2nd Amendment exists so that citizens can protect themselves from the tyranny of their own government, then you basically have to argue that it protects the right of a private citizen to carry machine guns, hand grenades, RPGs, heat seeking missiles, bombs and other military grade weaponry that ordinary citizens cannot possess, and that weapons that people even as conservative as Justice Scalia himself admit are not subject to 2nd Amendment protection.
Because an AR-15 might work great against a classroom full of school children and their teachers. But against drones and F-16s? Not as much.
Here's the deal. In 1787, our military was nominally funded and equipped. To ensure a defense, the 2nd Amendment allowed for private citizens to keep and bear arms as a private militia. Over the years, the military became better funded and better organized, and the need for private militas as a military supplement waned. States even drew up their own National Guards. Now, over time people also argued that the 2nd Amendment covered the ability to keep and bear arms for things such as hunting and personal safety. And that was met with various degrees of acceptance.
But nowhere was it intended that the 2nd Amendment was meant to give private citizens the right to protect against a supposedly tyrannical government. That's just unchecked paranoia speaking, and would give any dumbass the right to claim he's stockpiling an arsenal for what he claims is government tyranny but is in fact normal government operation.
And let's say, hypothetically speaking, that somewhere down the road the United States falls victim to a governmental leader who actually is tyrannical and evil and worth rebelling against. I'm talking like Hitler or Stalin territory. Any rebellion that is made up of nothing more than ragtag groups of gun owners would be squashed like a bug. It might only be successful if there were massive military defections with access to military grade weaponry. Even that might not be enough--look at Libya. Ghadaffi didn't fall until we brought in our jet fighters. The initial wave without assistance resulted in massive casualties for rebel forces.