[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, DanaC, the politics of guns in America springs entirely from America being organized as a Republic, never a Kingdom -- and in 1775 and 1812 there were a couple of rather intense discussions on the topic between the two. Artillery arguments, it's fair to say.

The fundamental idea of a republic is that every scrap of political power is ultimately sourced from the electorate -- and a bit from those associating with the electorate but not in it. Of late that is a vanishingly small population segment, but at one time it was half the adult population of the United States. Until the 19th Amendment finished that up.

To function as an electorate in a Republic, the electorate must be powerful, not emasculated. The power of life and death is about as direct as power can get. Power of life and death over the apparatus of the Government keeps the government as the people's servant, right where it belongs. The power to kill is a crude power, yes. But crude power converts readily into refined power, such as that of the ballot.

This was one of the first reasons guns should be kept. Citizen police powers, which is the rubric under which lawful use of force defending self and property and the life and property of others, is another of the first ones -- the invention of modern police departments was still some fifty or sixty years in the future, and the establishment of police departments does not supplant self defense by force. It is instead at bottom an aid to it -- professional, dedicated service to be an adjunct to the completely inalienable right of self defense.

Latterly, another compelling reason arose from these: that We the People have a right not to suffer genocide. Like police powers, this too is rooted in forcible self defense -- calm suasion is not how genocide gets done; it's always deadly force of course. Genocide was not something the Founding Fathers had any experience of, or they might have inserted something in the Second Amendment about it. But it's still true that armed populations do not suffer genocides, and genocides happen in places where the populations are not armed. There are a couple other precursors of genocides too, but the critical one is that the population not have arms. But a population with a lot of arms the Einsatzkommandos cannot tackle -- they are invariably outnumbered; they can only make up the difference in numbers if they are the only ones possessing killing tools.

If they are not, genocides do not happen. Genocides are very very bad things, as all agree: they're nasty enough that it's worth paying a pretty hefty price to escape. Hefty prices may be accounted in treasure or in lives. But having a genocide condemns at least the character of whole peoples. That stain is not a pretty one either.