Because we have ample evidence that it is not a fantasy situation - the French Resistance started off with zip guns: little homemade pipe pistols, and managed to pretty effectively take out numbers of Germans.
I didn’t mean that anybody anywhere resisting invasion was a fantasy situation, I meant that a United States Government which both respected to the letter the Bill of Rights and was so despotic that it needed to be overthrown by violence was a fantasy situation.
I mean, yes, if the martial law and the regulations the Nazi occupiers had imposed on the occupied French had guaranteed the French Resistance access to firearms so they could use them to repel the occupation, that would have been nice. But I suspect they didn’t. If your goal is to make it easy to overthrow a hypothetical totalitarian dictatorship, adding an amendment that says ”Private citizens can have access to firearms, just not nearly as powerful firearms as the government can have access to” is going to be just about as effective as the fact that the entire rest of the Constitution says, in effect, ”Don’t be a totalitarian dictatorship”.
Realistically, in 2010, I think privacy rights are a much, much more important defense against government intrusion than firearms. In a reply to darxus above, I discussed the fact that the Second Amendment uses language about access to a particular technology from a particular era, and doesn’t say that the people or the States or the militia or anybody has the right to effective means of rebellion against the Federal government or effective means of self defense or effective anything. It just says the right of the people to keep and carry certain specific tools shall not be infringed. (That’s assuming the meaning for “arms” that I think most gun-rights advocates intend; I presume you aren’t claiming that the Second Amendment protects your right to Predator drones and weaponized anthrax.)
I am pretty worried about the fact that the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted largely to apply to Eighteenth Century technology. (Specifying “papers” seems like a similar problem to specifying “arms”, in terms of achieving the presumably intended effect.)
Re: One person’s notion of the point of restrictions on gun ownership. (part 3)
I mean, yes, if the martial law and the regulations the Nazi occupiers had imposed on the occupied French had guaranteed the French Resistance access to firearms so they could use them to repel the occupation, that would have been nice. But I suspect they didn’t. If your goal is to make it easy to overthrow a hypothetical totalitarian dictatorship, adding an amendment that says ”Private citizens can have access to firearms, just not nearly as powerful firearms as the government can have access to” is going to be just about as effective as the fact that the entire rest of the Constitution says, in effect, ”Don’t be a totalitarian dictatorship”.
Realistically, in 2010, I think privacy rights are a much, much more important defense against government intrusion than firearms. In a reply to
I am pretty worried about the fact that the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted largely to apply to Eighteenth Century technology. (Specifying “papers” seems like a similar problem to specifying “arms”, in terms of achieving the presumably intended effect.)