A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Sways Judiciary

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

For that matter, so has the destructive power of handheld weaponry.

Which as we progunners never tire of pointing out, and which certain fatuists equally refuse to hear, the principle the Second Amendment supports is that the citizenry were to be trusted with being armed at least comparably to the best equipped armies of the time. Being a principle, it has the property of remaining unchanged with time. Single shot or repeater, fixed cartridge or no, it really doesn't change much when all parties possess them. It's when there is a great disparity that you run into trouble.

I'm not greatly troubled by the fatuists as long as their numbers can be kept minuscule and their notions laughed at by people more sensible (more anti-crime, etc.) than they.

In the 19th century, the government did start regulating crew-served artillery more closely.

In this Republic, as I've said before, the ultimate political power source is the people, the electorate. The electorate's total power is broadcast throughout its numbers, equally portioned out -- dilute, if you like. If any republic reduce the power of the electorate over public matters, it is on the road to becoming something not a republic -- a dictatorship or an oligarchy, and there goes legitimacy by the board. The citizen militia comes in as both a repository and a stronghold of the electorate's power, and makes the staffers of the government -- most of whom are also militia themselves, which seems fair enough -- accountable to the electorate for their actions with their lives and/or livelihoods. With the electorate armed, there is force available. Here is a most effectual check and balance on the State's insensate power. Power in politics is ultimately force, and we consider that the use of such coercive function, such force, be carefully hedged about with safeguards -- including a counterforce, however amorphous, however nebulous -- it's still there.

Against this desire to keep power in check, and what gives us problems both in the old times and now, is that work in the government always will attract those with a cast of mind to rule -- to exert force. Bureaucracy and the state being what they are, this habit of force tends to concentrate and increase, at least slowly, from generation to generation.

Founding father Thomas Jefferson (the President on the rarely seen US $2 bill) foresaw this. About the only solution to it he could see was to have more or less periodic revolutions -- to reset things, as it were. We American libertarians hope, though I don't think we exactly see how, to accomplish similar results by downsizing all government apparatus, at all levels, across the board. Federal-level bureaucracy gets the most attention on this score -- we'd like to reverse what we think Franklin D. Roosevelt did too much of.

Bruce: and the Militia Acts have changed also with time. Note they dropped specification on arms and equipment, such as the Act of 1792 laid out.