Quote:
Originally Posted by mykalberta
Example, if Texas ever wanted to exit the Union, and they voted on it and the vote passed and the Fed said, sorry cant do that, then they need to have the rights to then take up arms if they so choose to.
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This one always makes me scratch my head - does anyone *really* think that an unorganized bunch of citizens with handguns and rifles (even semi-auto) is going to do anything other than die messily if they go up against a modern army? You know, the guys with armoured vehicles, rocket artillery, mortars, air support, and all those other things you can't go out and buy at your local gun store?
Any real revolution/secession would have to have some kind of support from indigenous military elements, and heavy military hardware. Handguns are just not going to cut it, which is why I suppose the serious 2nd Amendment fanatics are all about getting automatic weapons into the hands of Joe Survivalist, who presumably then joins some kind of paramilitary organization dedicated to stopping the gov't if it ever tries to ban drive-thru fast food windows. You know, the guys in Idaho and Montana who are exactly the kind of unstable paranoids who shouldn't have access to guns at all.
I suppose it all makes sense if you are an extremist, but personally I think the energy spent on arming oneself for the apocalypse would be better spent in using democratic avenues to prevent the gov't from becoming oppressive in the first place, but that's just me.
As far as other reasons for the right to bear arms in general goes, it comes down to a question of culture - Americans are raised on the ideal of the cult of the righteous individual, and in a heritage where the ultimate expression of the freedom of conscience of the colonists was a revolution against their lawful government. This ideal, which is in my opinion the defining difference between Americans and Canadians, is the root of the general American distrust of the government, including (and especially) law enforcement. Home defence, bearing arms, armed resistance to authority - these aren't perceived merely as rights, but as sacred duties, and attacking those ideas is tantamount to heresy.
Of course, it is an open question whether an ideal forged in a time where a foreign government and state religion were threats to freedom, is more than marginally useful in modern times where the threats to freedom are more likely to be multinational corporations or a domestic security apparatus nominally concerned with "terrorism". I personally think that it would be far better to embrace the idea that neither the individual nor the State has a monopoly on righteousness, and that righteousness itself is a suspect condition to be decried wherever it appears.