I agree with the author of the article overall. I disagree with a small technicality of the argument though. The author claims that the Second Amendment is primarily about ones right to overthrow an oppressive governemnt. I disagree with this from the aspect that such a right was only given as an example of the reason for guaranteeing the right to bear arms which the people of the time would recognize aznd agre with, but not the only reason.
The part of the overall debate that I’m still mulling over is where do we draw the line. At what point is a weapon too powerful to be considered personal protection or necessary for ensuring civil liberties? If the police have automatic weapons and become puppets in a fascist regime, then in order to have the ability to overthrow the civil authorites the citizens would need at least the same. Or to escalate this into the realm of the ridiculous, what about nukes? Well a nuke would probably be overkill and take out far more than just the leaders of a government. The line has to be somewhere between a pea shooter and a nuclear weapon, but where and why?
Should that unhappy day arrive, the doors of the local National Guard Armories would swing wide open. Many — not all but many — of the citizens who are in the Guard would be on the barricades with the rest of us.
We’d probably have all the M-60s, MA2s, ammo and the rest we’d need to give a good account of ourselves.
Considering our Founding Fathers put a provision in the Constitution for contracting warships from citizens (Letters of Marque), I don't see that they did draw a line. Warships were the most powerful weapons of their day.
That said, I do think there is a legitimate concern for the regulation of NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) weapons. These things are inherently unstable and even the government has problems with containment. They should be considered a public hazard, not a weapon protected by the 2nd Amendment.
When you have to sit and decide what the authors of the 2nd Ammendment really meant, something is wrong. The 2nd Ammendment should be changed to be absolute and not interpreted by the court.
A seminal question, to be sure. And to which I must reply: "Would you trust a politician with nuclear weapons?"
Because you do. The most powerful weapons on the planet are controlled by people most of us would not buy a used car from.
Most of us cannot afford the 'care and feeding', the proper storage and maintenance of a nuke, much less a viable delivery system. However, virtually any man-portable weapon is a different matter, and would be even easier from a financial viewpoint if the supply was not limited by law, causing the price of the arms and their parts to be much higher than they are on the world market.
Having read the Federalist Papers, the RKBA was seen as the counter, in extremis, to the misuse of the military (be it the Federal standing army or the state militias) against the people, the bulwark against the usurpation of the power resident in the people, who are governed only by their consent.
Thus, whatever weapon, whatever arm necessary for the people to retain that power in the face of an overreaching government which can be effectively served and maintained by them should be included in the right.