WingCmdr Ginkapo wrote:Out of curiosity why was the second amendment first put into the constitution?
The theory was that the populace should be armed in order to be able to rise up against tyrants. Sounds reasonable, and I used to believe it.
Unfortunately, the theory doesn't work. Modern tyrants are not like their medieval counterparts. They check to make sure they have solid support when they enact tyrannical legislation, and generally speaking the majority of gun owners who should be rising up are in fact in support of the tyrant.
The theory was tested very early in American history, when Shays Rebellion flared up against the crony capitalism and regressive taxation policies of the Massachusetts government. Instead of spreading like wildfire through other overtaxed states as it should have, the Rebellion was soon put down by the U.S. government and its professional army. (Professional standing armies were recognised by the Founding Fathers as being the Achilles Heel of the rising-up militia theory, and the very first Article of the Constitution took measures to prevent standing armies. Of course, it was immediately subverted, with a revolving door of always-renewed "temporary" authorizations keeping a standing army going in perpetuity, precisely what the Constitution tried to prevent.)
Shortly after that, the Whiskey Rebellion met a similar fate, and in the two hundred and twenty-four years since, there has been no meaningful armed uprising against the Federal or any State government. Occasionally there is some local incident. I'm sure Phatscotty will pop up soon with his video of the Athens, Georgia uprising, but to me the most notable thing about the Athens rising is what a statistical anomaly it is. Of all the tens of thousands of corrupt mayors and corrupt sheriffs there are, only one has been removed by force. After Athens, the next time someone tried to remove a corrupt leader by force, at Wounded Knee, the federal government stepped in with deadly force and prevented it.
When Roosevelt confiscated the gold holdings of Americans, this was precisely the kind of tyrannical act that the Second Amendment was supposed to prevent, but in fact there was no meaningful resistance to it. No treasury agents were shot in the process of stealing gold. Many people complied willingly, others grumbled but complied, and still others took their concerns to court, but none actually rose up. If some had, they probably would have been hunted down.
When Bush used the 911 Reichstag Fire as an excuse to suspend habeas corpus, trial by jury, and other cherished protections of the Bill of Rights, this is precisely the kind of tyrannical act that the Second Amendment was supposed to prevent, but in fact there was no rising. On the contrary, there were many rallies of gun owners in support of Bush and reassuring him that he was more than welcome to stomp people's rights into the dirt.
After 224 years without any meaningful rebellion, America's ruling classes are pretty confident that they can always hoodwink the populace into supporting whatever tyrannical legislation is coming next. As a guarantor of rights, the Second Amendment is a bust.
