Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebe
I think the rub about the 2nd amendment is this- was it created to have a Militia ready to rise and fight for the country? Or was it intended to act as a deterrent from government oppression ? Is this question answered in the amendment? I do t think so.
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The Amendment, as written, was about the security of a free State. "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." That would include "rising and fighting," as you put it, against
ANY government which tried to limit or deny the freedoms granted to the People in the Constitution.
That was made clear by those who drafted the Constitution in their debates during ratification, and in their debates in various newspapers and journals, and especially in the essays in the ongoing debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. As well as in various comments by Founders during and after the ratification of the Constitution.
They understood the federal government they were creating might one day become just as tyrannical as the British government they had just overthrown. If it were given power to control citizen access to firearms as the British tried to do, then it could disarm them.
The Second Amendment was intended to protect the citizens from tyrannical government, regardless if it was "their own" or a foreign government. Even more so to protect against "their own" government, since attacks by foreign governments could initially and more efficiently be repelled by the standing federal military, not by the "militia," of "their own" government.