Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Yes, but they're fundamentally different, in that it no longer makes sense to require (or permit) people to keep arms so that they can muster out to join the militia in times of emergency.
I think all of this business about individual vs. group rights w/r/t to the Second Amendment misses the point -- it presumes too much about the framers. They provided for an individual right to bear arms for militia service, not thinking that technological development would lead to an entirely different military. They were writing before the internal combustion engine. The army was, essentially, men and horses.
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I like handguns. I've fired handguns and found them to be a lot of fun. Still, I see no use for them for about 90% of the population. And I'd never own one. I am no NRA nut.
That said, the idea the govt, which already intrudes in our lives to a degree never intended by the framers, may intrude more and more while simultaneously forcing us to give up weapons presumes an ever benevolent govt. While even a hardened hater of govt like myself thinks the govt is generally benevolent, and though I don't think we're moving toward a full-on Big Brother state of any sort, I'm still uneasy with the idea of any controlling entity curtailing my access to an instrument of self-defense thats been commonly used by half the country for the last 200 years. I think on a level we don't admit exists, the populous's easy access guns act as a last line deterrent against complete control by the govt, were the govt ever to shift into such a dictatorial mode.
