> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator
This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
replies(26):
This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
It's not why we have the 2nd Amendment. 2A applies only to militias, and the Constitution explicitly gives Congress power over State militias to suppress insurrections:
"The Congress shall have Power To... provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions" [1]
Further, the Militia Act of 1792 allows the president to commandeer them as well, and this was famously used by George Washington himself to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.
2A is just a relic from a time when the US had neither the resources nor the political will to create and maintain a standing army. It's been co-opted very recently by the Right to rile people up and drive them to the polls (while incidentally enriching themselves), but it's completely outdated. The only reason anyone thinks otherwise is that Scalia legislated from the bench in Heller to resurrect it.
[1]: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
This is untrue, and the Supreme Court has ruled several times on it. The states, which mostly modeled their Constitutions on the Federal ones, have a significant majority of them giving the people explicit individual right to bear arms.
Or read the Federalist Papers, or look at common law leading up to the constitution, or realize that the Bill of Rights was added at the states request to protect individual rights, not collective govt sanctioned rights.
This is a pretty weak appeal to authority. My rejoinders are Dred Scott and Korematsu (or anything about the idiotic "right to contract"). The Court isn't always right.
> or realize that the Bill of Rights was added at the states request to protect individual rights, not collective govt sanctioned rights
Well, 9A protects individual rights not enumerated, but 10A protects State rights not enumerated. States were entirely consumed with their own rights; that's why we've had to apply the Bill of Rights to States via incorporation & 14A.
> Or read the Federalist Papers
Madison does talk about the right to bear arms in the Federalist Papers [1]. But he was talking explicitly about States vs. the Federal government. He also later saw how bad militias were at being an army (a point Washington argued over and over again) in the War of 1812 and changed his position in favor of a strong, standing, Federal army. Let's pull some quotes here (emphasis added):
> The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition.
> That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both...
> that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm...
> Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
> To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
> Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
> Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
First, Madison repeatedly emphasizes local and State governments as a key component of repelling tyranny. But he also exclusively conceives of such resistance solely through the local and State militias.
2A is absolutely not about individual rights. No Founder ever talked about it in this way. It's about militias.
Absolutely untrue.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
I don't need to refute it any further with additional quotes., it's a ridiculous statement.
Furthermore the mentioning of the recent Heller case in the Supreme Court is not an appeal to authority. Read the majority and minority opinions, they are comprehensive in every argument for and against the individual/collective interpretation of the right and arguments for your position are handled expertly by the majority.
Edit: Thought I would reply to your Heller stuff too.
It's an appeal to authority because it's selective. The precedent when the Court decided Heller was set by Miller [1], which reads at the outset (emphasis mine):
> The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.
If you're gonna invoke the Court, you have to invoke the whole thing. And to that end, there's a long history of the Court backing up the individual's right to bear arms under some pretty dubious logic. All of which is to say the Court is and always has been a political institution. No Justice since John Marshall has ever known what the Founders thought, because they weren't them. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to get one over on you.
The debate's supercharged, mostly for good reasons (mass shootings are very high stakes). But the rhetoric around subjugating the people by confiscating their weapons is overheated. America has the chance to show that there's an alternative to completely outlawing firearms that adequately accommodates all lifestyles in our country. But we have to be reasonable and not jump down bonkers rabbit holes like "owning a gun is immoral and makes you an ignorant, self-serving hick", or "AOC wants to personally confiscate your gun and slap you".
That's why I think Heller did so much damage. Cities like Chicago and DC were enacting handgun bans to try and cope with escalating gun violence. They weren't mounting an assault on 2A. Leaving policy decisions like this to local and State governments is exactly what the Bill of Rights was meant to do. This way a state like Oregon can say, "there's mountain lions here, you might need a gun", or Indiana can say, "we have deer hunting, so you can have a hunting rifle in season and keep it locked up at some repo off season", or Chicago can say, "you can't have a gun here, violence is out of control". But Heller robbed us of a core policymaking tool. Actually it's pretty ironic that an originalist like Scalia dismantled a policymaking tool that the Founders themselves wrote into the Constitution. But whatever! We can overturn Heller and get it back I guess, in like 40 years or something.
PS. I'm 50/50 on handgun bans. The danger is that it's just another way to lock up young men of color, so I think anyone adopting them needs a mitigation that isn't felony or incarceration.