this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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Of course! Isn't this situation what the second amendment is for? 🤔
It's the situation they claim it's for, but no it isn't. The second amendment is to have a militia ready to defend the nation in case of invasion. Militias were the norm at the time, not standing professional armies, which the newly founded tiny union of states certainly didn't expect to have. That time came and went though and some people carried the corpse of the second amendment and turned it into something else that it clearly isn't.
There's one more step that brings it back to the same place. The thinking behind standing armies is that they would be used for tyranny. The reason for loosely connected militias is that there isn't a singular guy who is Commander-in-Chief of all of them. There was even attempts at a militia Navy, which is a hilarious idea to me ("Got my musket and my rowboat. Off to defend the motherland!" Rows up to 28-gun British heavy frigate)
It's not a practical system of defense in the modern age. It barely was back then.
To be fair, it wasn't some people but the majority opinion of Chief Justice Antonin Scalia in DC v. Heller (2008) that swept away the militia part as a mere "prefatory clause". 😔