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Why does the 2nd Amendment protect the Right to Arms?

Why does the 2nd Amendment protect the Right to Arms?


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Why does the 2nd Amendment protect the Right to Arms?

So that the people will always have access to firearms for....
(see choices)

Please explain your answer.

All of the above, the other reason is to rise against an corrupt oppressive tyrannical government.
 
Why does the 2nd Amendment protect the Right to Arms?...

All should be protected. But the fundamental purpose is to protect the people's right to defend themselves. That includes defending themselves against corrupt government.

Basically, that is what the American Revolution was all about.
 
All should be protected. But the fundamental purpose is to protect the people's right to defend themselves. That includes defending themselves against corrupt government.

Basically, that is what the American Revolution was all about.

What is Ron Paul's position on the 2nd, and has he made any commentary on Obama’s intention to bring back the fairness doct- er, I mean, assault weapons ban.
 
I'm not sure if these reasons have been mentioned yet, but we have guns to protect ourselves and overthrow our government if it becomes tyranical. :mrgreen:
 
I'm not sure if these reasons have been mentioned yet, but we have guns to protect ourselves and overthrow our government if it becomes tyranical. :mrgreen:

If the top circle of government is smart and sly about their tyranny, plus with the help of todays tech....most people will never even know or believe there is tyranny when it happens in todays world
 
Killing people when necessary

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I'm not sure if these reasons have been mentioned yet, but we have guns to protect ourselves and overthrow our government if it becomes tyranical. :mrgreen:

Sorry to disillusion you and all the others who long for an armed patriotic revolution, but our founding fathers did not write the Second Amendment to give the masses the opportunity to come shoot them if they felt the need. The Second Amendment was put in the constitution to guarantee a supply of soldiers for the army (militia). Period.
 
I think that the primary reason behind it is to help rebel against the government should they become to tyrannical. Though I wonder how effective the guns people can own personally would be against the guns of the military along with their vehicles. If there was a time when it got bad enough for rebellion to be necessary I suppose we would have to hope that a significant portion of the military turned against the government as well.
 
Obviously for a well regulated militia!

English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries: force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government, the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.

These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists. The check on all government, not simply the federal government, was the armed population, the militia. Government would not be accorded the power to create a select militia since such a body would become the government's instrument. The whole of the population would comprise the militia. As the constitutional debates prove, the framers recognized that the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual's right to arms, thus empowering the people to resist tyranny and preserve the republic. The intent was not to create a right for other (p.1039)governments, the individual states; it was to preserve the people's right to a free state, just as it says.


Valparaiso Univ. Law Review

THE HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT



A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Saul Cornell ? Here is a description.

Description
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong.

Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right-- an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia.

He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders.

Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century.
The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts.

Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century.


Oxford University Press: OUP USA Home



"A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."

--Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801


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. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. 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. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. 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.


Confederation & Constitution: Federalist Papers: Federalist No.46
 
I think that the primary reason behind it is to help rebel against the government should they become to tyrannical. Though I wonder how effective the guns people can own personally would be against the guns of the military along with their vehicles. If there was a time when it got bad enough for rebellion to be necessary I suppose we would have to hope that a significant portion of the military turned against the government as well.

Sorry, it just doesn't make sense that the Founding Fathers would build in a provision to allow the masses (at the time they were quite snobby about common people) to overthrow the government using force.
It doesn't make much sense anyhow. Each day a different person or group of people could decide it's time to overthrow the governement....it's happened quite a bit already. These people aren't organized, they just grab a gun and pretend to be patriots. To imagine that the constitution has the government's violent overthrow built into it is naive at best.
 
Sorry, it just doesn't make sense that the Founding Fathers would build in a provision to allow the masses (at the time they were quite snobby about common people) to overthrow the government using force.
It doesn't make much sense anyhow. Each day a different person or group of people could decide it's time to overthrow the governement....it's happened quite a bit already. These people aren't organized, they just grab a gun and pretend to be patriots. To imagine that the constitution has the government's violent overthrow built into it is naive at best.

It is not the only aspect, but it is certainly an integral one...
You had plenty of time to review my sources, yet you proceeded to make such a statement?
I would be a bit more careful before casting comments unto others about being "naive". ;)
 
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Sorry, it just doesn't make sense that the Founding Fathers would build in a provision to allow the masses (at the time they were quite snobby about common people) to overthrow the government using force.
It doesn't make much sense anyhow. Each day a different person or group of people could decide it's time to overthrow the governement....it's happened quite a bit already. These people aren't organized, they just grab a gun and pretend to be patriots. To imagine that the constitution has the government's violent overthrow built into it is naive at best.

There is an authority from which the Constitution is based, and it is that authority which provides the right to violently overthrow the Constitution.
 
There is an authority from which the Constitution is based, and it is that authority which provides the right to violently overthrow the Constitution.



"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."

-- Thomas Jefferson
 
There is an authority from which the Constitution is based, and it is that authority which provides the right to violently overthrow the Constitution.

yes, but that authority is not cited in the Constitution, only in the Declaration of Independence.
 
yes, but that authority is not cited in the Constitution, only in the Declaration of Independence.

Even if that were true, who cares?

It exists non the less.

The right to keep and carry existed millennia before the Constitution, and will exist millennia after.

The people themselves have the right to overthrow an existing government and reorganize themselves however they see best.
 
Even if that were true, who cares?

It exists non the less.

The right to keep and carry existed millennia before the Constitution, and will exist millennia after.

The people themselves have the right to overthrow an existing government and reorganize themselves however they see best.

Several posts in this thread credit the second amendment with the implication that it justifies violent overthrow. The only historical document which deals with the issue at all is the Declaration of Independence, which is not a legal document, just a letter to King George. There have been strict laws throughout history regarding the personal ownership of weapons, especially high tech weapons.
The people do NOT have the right to overthrow an existing government on an individual basis. A well organized group of committed rebels has the right to TRY to overthrow the government, but that does not make them patriots. As you remember, it was tried one time in American history and, fortunately for us all, failed. And I say that as a Southerner, whose great grandfather fought at Chickamauga.
 
WillRockwell,

I will take Valparaiso Univiversity Law Review's analysis over your opinion on this matter, I think. ;)
 
Sorry to disillusion you and all the others who long for an armed patriotic revolution, but our founding fathers did not write the Second Amendment to give the masses the opportunity to come shoot them if they felt the need. The Second Amendment was put in the constitution to guarantee a supply of soldiers for the army (militia). Period.




Army =\= militia, you know that right? :roll:
 
Sorry to disillusion you and all the others who long for an armed patriotic revolution, but our founding fathers did not write the Second Amendment to give the masses the opportunity to come shoot them if they felt the need. The Second Amendment was put in the constitution to guarantee a supply of soldiers for the army (militia). Period.

Umm how wrong can you get?

Firstly a militia is not an army and secondly many of the FF's explicitly stated they meant for it to be used to restrain gov't tyranny.

The bill of rights was forced into the constitution by the anti-federalists who did not trust the federal gov't.
 
The fact that you have not provided a link speaks volumes. If you can show in the Constitution or Bill of Rights where the Founding Fathers encouraged armed insurrection, I'll be happy to apologize in public. Either **** or get off the pot.

What are you talking about? I provided a link and I never claimed it was in the constitution. You are a way off target and talking rubbish.
 
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