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Having just read this article, I'm reminded yet again that the founders **never** thought the purpose of a "well-regulated militia" was for it to take up arms someday against an overweening state or federal government. academic.oup.com/jah/article-ab…
The founders supported an armed militia because it served what they perceived to be the useful purposes of putting down "domestic insurrections" and providing a defense against foreign nations.
The "domestic insurrections" they had in mind were slave revolts...and the "foreign nations" they were concerned about were the empires of Spain, England, & France, as well as a range of Native nations.
As with everything, it's not like we need to be strictly beholden to the historically-specific intent of the founders whenever we interpret the constitution.
But if someone tells you that the founders intended for us to have a right to bear arms so we can shoot agents of our own government who we decide have become tyrants, they are just making sh*t up.
The bizarro interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that now reigns supreme on the right was largely invented by the NRA in the late 1970s. It's impressive (in a bad way) how effective their efforts have been in shifting our national conversation on this. brennancenter.org/analysis/how-n…
Again, I want to emphasize that if we, as a nation, decide that we want to arm citizens so that they can kill government agents when they think their rights have been infringed, then we should do it. We just shouldn't pretend that it's what the founders intended.
And for the record, I think arming citizens so they can kill government officials is a TERRIBLE idea. But if people truly want to espouse it, they should at least have to do it openly and not hide behind "the founders."
I failed to mention earlier that another form of "domestic insurrection" the writers of the Constitution wanted the militias to put down were insurrections like Shays, comprised of armed US citizens who thought the government was being tyrannical.
We can say that was wrong for the Founders to want to do that. But we shouldn't pretend like that wasn't their intent.
After all, Alexander Hamilton gleefully marched a huge army out to Western Pennsylvania in 1794 (on the orders of George Washington) to put down an armed insurrection of US citizens who thought the Whisky tax was tyrannical.
Not stanning for AHam or GW here...but if one thinks "the founders" intended the 2nd Amendment to protect the right to engage in armed insurrection against the government, then AHam and GW would like a word.
The article I cited at the beginning makes a sharp distinction between 1776 (when obviously the insurgents thought it was ok to take up arms against the existing government) and 1787 when they decided that didn't apply to the new constitutional republic.
And the article I cited also focuses mostly on James Madison's thinking, the person who had the most influence on the shape the Constitution took. "The founders" were a diverse lot. It's the ones who wrote & defended the Constitution of 1787 that I'm talking about here.
This seems like an appropriate moment to re-up an old thread where I tried to figure out why contemporary conservatives are so adamant about gun rights, yet so 'meh' about voting rights.
