> 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".
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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the Right to rile people up and drive them to the polls (while incidentally enriching themselves), but it's completely outdated.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.
This is not appeal to authority. You keep misusing that term in this thread to belittle things you dislike. Appeal to authority would be to say an argument is right solely because an expert said so. No one has made that argument. The things people are pointing out to you are quotes and historical facts. There is no other evidence than these to demonstrate the point.
So much of what you say is wrong. A good source with a lot of historical references is the 1982 Congressional Research Office report on the matter, with hundreds of citations for you to check. Some quotes:
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights.)
"The great object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun." (Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution.)
Yet you claim "2A is absolutely not about individual rights. No Founder ever talked about it in this way."? I just gave you two Founder quotes; there are many more. There's a lot more in that report that proves you wrong. The state constitutions they wrote also prove you wrong.
The research report traces the right to bear arms from around 800AD through many places that formed the right as the founders understood, and provides ample quotes from Founding Fathers to show that they did intend individual rights. It's also why the vast majority of the states, when copying the bill of rights into their own constitutions, also give individual rights. As evidence, here are a few of the state constitution rights from the original 13 colonies. All states are covered in [2]:
Connecticut: Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state
Delaware: A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use
Georgia: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne
Massachusetts: The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.
New Hampshire: All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.
Pennsylvania: The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.
Rhode Island: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
So either all these states didn't understand the original intent, even though many of them had constitutions written by the same people, or the modern interpretation is wrong.
[1] https://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/87senrpt.pdf [2] http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htm
They're not talking about 2A.
> So much of what you say is wrong. A good source with a lot of historical references is the 1982 Congressional Research Office report on the matter, with hundreds of citations for you to check.
I sincerely hope you're not saying a document written by lobbyists (NRA's in there) for a committee chaired by Strom Thurmond is an authority here.
> States blah blah
Yeah, my position is that 2A lets the States regulate the right to bear arms. So that's fine.
> This is not appeal to authority. You keep misusing that term in this thread to belittle things you dislike. Appeal to authority would be to say an argument is right solely because an expert said so. No one has made that argument.
More than one person has said "the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution and Heller is the law of the land" (paraphrasing). That's a direct appeal to the authority of the Supreme Court as experts. But the Court is wrong all the time, and is deeply political.