[sp332]

One of the founding principles of the United States government was the Leviathan from Thomas Hobbes' book. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Leviathan_%28... It's not just a book about government, it starts with a discussion of the nature of humanity, and then works out (using thought experiments) what a peaceful society would have to be like, given human nature.

[anon998877]

Hobbes draws an anthropology before stating his theory of the state. But we should take care here, a few points:

firstly the anthropology is terribly negative and the conclusion are that without government we would leave in a violent state of nature. It's not that clear that without government the situation would be so violent and moreover, from scientific point of view, it's also not that clear that there was such a state of nature: homo sapiens could well have been really civilized when he became home sapiens.

Secondly Hobbes never concludes that we should be armed or anything like that. No. He concludes that we need a powerful state and that to build this state we need to give up some of our rights. We give some rights and the state acquire the obligation to protect us. If you think about it it goes totally against the American vision: Hobbes would probably agree that the citizen should give up their rights to be armed, to throw out the state of nature, and in return the state would protect them. This seems really hobbesian, not the reverse.

[sp332]

But the Leviathan is a construction of the people. The Leviathan can't take or be anything that the people didn't have to begin with. So if the Leviathan might have the power of, say, capital punishment, one must first allow that the people had the power of capital punishment first, in their "natural state", and then gave it to the Leviathan. Every power the government has - owning guns, levying taxes and fines, imprisoning criminals, printing money - is a power that individuals used to have, that have been given up (in varying degrees) to the Leviathan.

The right to bear arms seems to be something that is expressly protected by the Bill of Rights, and this is definitely an aspect of the relationship of the government with the people, not of people to each other. I'm sure Jefferson and Madison didn't want people to go around threatening each other with guns, but they still wanted the government to be afraid of people with guns.