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Ahhhhh, no it doesn’t. 2A was designed to allow for calling up armed and well trained citizen militias in service of national defense so that we didn’t have to field a national standing army. It was not designed to arm an insurrection. The Founders weren’t morons.

OTOH, that’s what gun fetishists think the second amendment is for, but it’s not like they’re not used to 100% cognitive dissonance all the time, so an appeal to their own hypocrisy just isn’t going to get any traction.

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That the Supreme Court blew this fact up does not invalidate your point about the intent, but it does make it all the more depressing.

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I don’t believe your suggestion about the purpose of the second amendment here is accurate.

The founding fathers were less concerned about entrenching their own power, than they were about preventing the overreach of government power and recreating the tyranny that they had just fought to overturn. Support for the notion of an insurrection in the face of tyranny was absolutely a thing that these men had demonstrated immediately prior. They were, in a very literal sense, insurrectionists, and there was reason to think that tyranny could return given that’s how it worked everywhere else in the world.

And in their own insurrection, the fact that the colonists widely held firearms that were on par with those of the military they were engaging certainly played a key role in the success of the revolution.

Now, in no gun fetishist, and I believe that in the current military environment the difference in power level of the actual military and since folks with small arms makes such an armed revolution virtually impossible, so I’m not sure it makes sense, but I still don’t believe that your suggestion surrounding the motivations of the second amendment is accurate.

To be clear, even if you embrace the understanding of the 2nd amendment which focuses on the initial clause taking about a militia, the second amendment is STILL somewhat about an insurrection. It merely places that capability in the hands of the States, guaranteeing that they can form state militias in order to, potentially, secure their own rights from the federal government.

From Cornell Law’s page on this subject:

The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”) and its operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”). To perhaps oversimplify the opposing arguments, the “states’ rights” thesis emphasized the importance of the prefatory clause, arguing that the purpose of the clause was to protect the states in their authority to maintain formal, organized militia units. The “individual rights” thesis emphasized the operative clause, so that individuals would be protected in the ownership, possession, and transportation of firearms.1 Whatever the Amendment meant, it was seen as a bar only to federal action, not state2 or private3 restraints.

The two primary interpretations of this amendment both involve the protection of rights against the federal government… the legal dispute is just about whether it’s protecting the States’ ability to rebel, or individuals.

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I thought the second amendment was to protect slave owners, and allow them to form groups to capture run away slaves.

Something completely different.

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Timex, please read Federalist Paper #29

Some quotes:

THE power of regulating the militia, and of commanding its services in times of insurrection and invasion are natural incidents to the duties of superintending the common defense, and of watching over the internal peace of the Confederacy.

If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security.

If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force. If it cannot avail itself of the former, it will be obliged to recur to the latter. To render an army unnecessary, will be a more certain method of preventing its existence than a thousand prohibitions upon paper.

Specifically this issue of the states rebelling against the feds (or even worse, individuals rebelling) is just NOT IN THERE. AT ALL. Instead, what’s in there is the idea is we should maintain a state level militia INSTEAD OF a central standing army, not to rebel against the feds but to prevent a standing army from forming a power center as it had in other nations. You have to be aware of the historical context of the founding; for example, the Constitution was adopted BEFORE the French Revolution go into full swing but not long after Frederick the Great of Prussia used a centralized army to dominate central Europe.

Timex, I respect you as a poster but I sometimes feel like you still rely on deceptive or manipulative knowledge that was fed to you during your years an a member of the GOP, and that you accepted, at that time, uncritically. I’ve seen you turn your critical understanding on many many topics as you’ve evolved (as have we all) and I think the GOP has reached a point of devolution where you should probably consider pretty much everything you learned prior to turning away from the GOP with vast skepticism. This includes both stuff learned through “conservative” media as well as a lot of mainstream education.

It is true that the conservative media portrays the adoption of the 2nd amendment the way you describe but the actual historical sources say that Matt_W is correct, or at least far more correct than the right wing media.

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Of all the dumb power fantasies gun owners have, overthrowing a government they don’t like is probably #1. It didn’t work out in 1861, and it’s even less likely to work now.

-Tom

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Flynn is now denying his comments. But the question and his answer is on video recorded and clear. Which only leaves him the options that he either didn’t understand the question, or he doesn’t understand what happened in Myanmar.

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Or, and bear with me here, he’s a mendacious traitor worried that he might have outkicked his coverage.

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There’s one more option.

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But doesn’t this context suggest that the rationale for the state based militia is the same? Namely, that by putting military power into the hands of the States, that you avoid the potential for tyranny in the federal government?

Further, the US had a standing army going back to 1789, two years prior to the bill of rights being penned, so I’m not sure that we can really believe that the intention of the second amendment was to take the place of the standing army, Federalist #29 not withstanding.

This is a fair suggestion, and I believe that my views on this particular issue have perhaps evolved.

However, I think that at this point it’s become more of an issue of practical reality. I don’t really think that it is practically feasible for individuals to enact an effective armed revolution against a modern military using small arms.

But this is a feature of modern militaries, and not one that existed in 1791.

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It’s almost like the people who wrote the US Constitution didn’t have perfect context for the way shit was going to go down 150 years later.

OTOH, the “loyalty of the military” axis has been a relevant one w/r/t the stability of a government since well before Caesar.

Not gonna lie, I’ve given non-zero thought to arming myself with gestures broadly at this whole shit. I’m generally very much Captain Progressive in so many ways, but is it really responsible toward my family for me to come at the Proud Boys with a hammer when they come into my neighborhood with guns?

This is not a theoretical exercise. This is borne of actual conversations with my neighbors in the last year.

I am terrified of and hate physical violence. Not because I’m a beta cuck, but because a gun is a magic wand that can take away or maim my loved ones forever at the flick of a finger.

Given that the dipshit caucus has prevented any meaningful gun control for forever, I no-shit feel like I’m failing my family by remaining unarmed.

You guys know me. I’d like to think that I’m not that guy. But I also would very much not like to feel the way I did when shit went one degree north of all the way down last summer.

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You aren’t.

I understand why we might all feel that way emotionally. But the data also say that we are safer without those extra guns around, including our own. Just not worth the risks they add in return for any theoretical advantage.

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+1

Tbh, I also considered arming myself against such a possibility. But then I remembered the words of Ghandi, at least his words as said by Ben Kingsley.

“There is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”

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The best thing you can do really, is have a bugout plan where you can leave America on short notice, and a reserve of funds to live for a bit until you can be accepted as a refugee.

None of us are truly suited for the type of warfare it would take to fight such a war. It is truly the worst form of hell. A civil war in America would be more brutal and nasty than anything that happened in Syria.

I’d flee instead of fight, and I’ve made concrete plans should this be needed. Not the best plans, but I’d have to go the one place I can get citizenship. When Biden won I was able to put the money I pulled out back in the bank.

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I don’t think democracy is the aberration. I think caring about governance is the aberration.

For most of history as long as the ruling party seems to be in vague support of the established interests - however they are established and whomever they are - those interests will give some degree of support. And for most of history that form of government has been non democratic.

Democracy is about a citizenry caring about how decisions are made. The scary thing about the GOP and their voters is their apparently increasing disillusionment about the whole apparatus of government in general. When you think everything is a dumpster fire you stop caring who is tending the flames.

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Wonder if he actually believes that or if it’s just a way for him to perpetuate his “fundraising”.