A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
There's been debate over these terms "Militia" and "State," but the operative part is: ". . . the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
So be it. We have a right to bear arms.
Let's take a look at how that right came about now, shall we?
The Second Amendment is somewhat of a paradox when you think about it. In these words we see government, which normally reserves to itself a "monopoly on violence," granting that citizens, too, may resort to force of arms when "security" requires it.
And when might that be? Oh, just in case the government – the same Government that codified all the rights, mind you – should need to be overthrown someday. (Sic semper tyrannis, baby!)
Actually, there's a kind of crude logic to this. There's no denying that even the best-laid governments gang awry. In the 1780s, with the recent depradations of King George III still fresh, Americans were looking a bulwark against history repeating with the Feds in the role of KG III. They found just such a bulwark in the Second Amendment.
Following the Revolution, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation. Federalists argued that this government had an unworkable division of power between Congress and the states caused military weakness, as the standing army was reduced to as few as 80 men. They considered it to be bad that there was no effective federal military crackdown to an armed tax rebellion in western Massachusetts known as Shays' Rebellion.
Anti-federalists on the other hand took the side of limited government and sympathized with the rebels, many of whom were former Revolutionary War soldiers. Subsequently, the Philadelphia Convention proposed in 1787 to grant Congress exclusive power to raise and support a standing army and navy of unlimited size. Anti-federalists objected to the shift of power from the states to the federal government, but as adoption of the Constitution became more and more likely, they shifted their strategy to establishing a bill of rights that would put some limits on federal power.
Full article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
All well and good, but that was nearly 225 years ago. In those 2.25 centuries, when, oh when, have the American people even come close to needing to take up arms to protect themselves from the federal government?
–Never, that's when! Unless you count that one time when a bunch of hoo-haws tried to insist on their "right" to enslave people. In that case – the one case where the federal government took up arms against its own (disloyal) subjects – the government was right and the subjects were wrong.
Since the nation's founding, we've seen the government falter in its judgment at times. We've also seen times of Constitutional stress and strain. But never has there been a time when our government as a whole was anything less than democractic and Constitutional. To say nothing of tyrannical.
So what's all this business about needing guns to protect ourselves from government? We ARE the government.
For better or worse . . .
westseattleblog
West Seattle Blog
West Seattle Blog
