[pnw_hazor]

The Army has nothing to with personal self-defense or protection of civil rights. Standing armies were the part of the motivation for the 2nd Amd.

There is plenty of 2nd Amd. scholarship that goes over all of this. Not saying you need to agree with the scholarship, but a lot of people have thought about his stuff and researched it deeply.

Gotchas statements re: "...well regulated...", cars are registered why not guns, restrict people to owning muskets, etc., are unhelpful.

[dragonwriter]

> The Army has nothing to with personal self-defense or protection of civil rights

In the view of the theory underlying the second amendment, it is an existential threat to the latter which makes assuring that the State can meet it's internal and external security needs solely through small permanent cadres plus mobilization of the citizen militia of paramount importance.

> Standing armies were the part of the motivation for the 2nd Amd.

Preventing standing armies was, which is presumably why the statement was that having one (and also standing paramilitary forces for internal security, which was actually the abuse that was the biggest fear motivating fear of standing armies) rendered the second amendment irrelevant.

[nobodyandproud]

> Preventing standing armies was, which is presumably why the statement was that having one (and also standing paramilitary forces for internal security, which was actually the abuse that was the biggest fear motivating fear of standing armies) rendered the second amendment irrelevant.

This is inaccurate?

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist_(Dawson)/45

James Madison argues from the assumption of having an standing army, and why an armed populace makes a Federal tyranny unlikely.

There are many (most) things I don’t like about Republicans, but making THIS an issue is something I just don’t understand about Democrats.

Pick your battles.