> The First Amendment is worthless without the Second Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment was never (and still isn't) meant to ensure the right of people to violently resist or overthrow the government. The way to influence the US government is to become involved in the process, not (threaten to) shoot people. If that's ever not the case, you don't have a country, you have a failed state.
It is simply a fact that the Second Amendment was meant to preserve the people's right to overthrow the government (or, at least, to defend themselves against the government). Madison famously wrote that state militias would keep a federal army in check.
It's a persistent myth that this is not the case. The US was born in revolution and the founders were very concerned about the possibility of a tyrannical government.
Even if it wasn't explicitly stated, the Second Amendment was written by people who had just used militias as a big part of their force to overthrow the government. They weren't senile. They hadn't forgotten. They knew what they were saying.
> It is simply a fact that the Second Amendment was meant to preserve the people's right to overthrow the government (or, at least, to defend themselves against the government).
Nah, this is totally wrong. 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 take control of State militias, and this was famously used by George Washington himself to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.
> Madison famously wrote that state militias would keep a federal army in check.
He did, yes, but he was talking 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. And FWIW, we put the question of States keeping the Federal government in check to bed in the Civil War.
The right to bear arms arrived to the United States via English common law. It existed in English common law for the purpose of self-defense, resistance against oppression, and to assist the defense of the realm.
Whether or not Madison (or Washington or whoever) changed his mind at some point does not change the fact that this is the purpose of the Second Amendment. No other laws (like the ones you cited) change this fact, nor does the Civil War.
You can argue that this interpretation is obsolete, but it's the interpretation that was predominant when the Constitution was ratified. Denying that is ahistorical.
I'm sure many people interpreted it that way, but they're also wrong, and they evidently didn't write either the Constitution or the Militia Act, or 2A. And I guess when I refer to intent, I mean those authors.
Militias were explicitly under the control of both Congress and the president, by law and the Constitution. And militias were used to quell rebellion, not to serve it. These are facts. I understand they're counter to your and others' interpretations, but that doesn't make them any less factual.
And when you consider:
- 2A only applied to militias
- Any "security from tyranny" was States being free from Federal tyranny
- the Civil War erased any doubt about the States rebelling against the Federal government
- The last Militia Act in 1909 made militias into the _National_ Guard
then you have to concede 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.
Well, sadly, it's of course violence. The basic contract of government is you give up some liberty for safety (Hobbes), i.e. you don't go around robbing people, and the government will see that no one else goes around robbing you. But this sort of first form of government was inflexible, and if you wanted to change it you basically had to kill the people in charge. The chief innovation of liberal government was "self governance", and the trade there was "OK, we'll listen to you, you don't have to murder us to effect change". Practically everyone does this via some form of voting.
But as soon as that contract breaks down, i.e. the government stops listening to you, then that contract is breached and generally trouble starts. It gets (arguably) even worse if the government falls entirely, because then you get the kind of lawless marauding you had before any government.
I mean, I guess the argument here is "well, if the gov't goes crazy we still have weapons because 2A let us amass them". But in reality, the US government is unimaginably powerful. Like they could easily take control of all energy producing facilities everywhere, every major city, port, road, railroad, airport, hospital, etc. There are probably close to a million law enforcement officials in the US. And all that's to say nothing of advanced military, surveillance, and espionage capability.
Basically, the idea that 2A would let us protect any semblance of our current way if life is fantasy. The most you could hope for is to join a resistance and dig in for a generations long, probably species destroying authoritarian regime to run its course.
The 2nd Amendment was never (and still isn't) meant to ensure the right of people to violently resist or overthrow the government. The way to influence the US government is to become involved in the process, not (threaten to) shoot people. If that's ever not the case, you don't have a country, you have a failed state.