[edhelas]

French here, what was the the 2nd Amendment already?

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

A yes, "necessary to the security of a free State", so, what about it?

[quantummagic]

Many Americans don't value the 2nd amendment very much. Public opinion in Minnesota in particular, is largely in favour of strict gun laws. Many anti-gun advocates claim that developing a militia against the government is futile and even counterproductive.

[locopati]

You point out the views of anti-gun folks while failing to note that all those loud & proud 2A advocates seem to be pretty happy with the current turn of events and not showing up at all as the government overreaches and repeatedly shits on the Constitution. I imagine there a quite a number of Don't Tread On Me gun lovers in ICE.

[CompanionCubee]

> Public opinion in Minnesota in particular, is largely in favour of strict gun laws. Many anti-gun advocates claim that developing a militia against the government is futile and even counterproductive.

So a "have your cake and eat it too" situation.

[pseudohadamard]

The US has a well-regulated (= heavily-armed) militia. It's the NRA and it's on the side of the dictatorship. Somehow they completely forgot that their purpose was to stand up to a tyrannical government, not to support it.

[rolph]

regulation of a militia. the apocrypha is that "the people" have uninfringed rights to arms, as a counter to a militia that is conveying tyranny.

i have read, in various places, that the last straw initiating foment of open revolution was when the kings militia began "taking liberties" with the wives and daughters of the colonists. piecemeal resistance, consolidated to a social movement, and the "shot heard around the world" was loosed.

[jshier]

After the Civil War, nearly all states gave up on maintaining their own independent militia and they became the National Guard (a few states maintain poorly provisioned state guards). Ostensibly the Guard is run by the states but can be federalized at any time. Previous presidents only used that to deploy the Guard overseas, with a few exceptions (notably Eisenhower, to enforce the early civil rights legislation and court decisions). Unfortunately those powers were never reformed, so Trump has already deployed them domestically (though there have been court decisions against that), but it effectively means states can't use the Guard to protect against federal aggression (it would simply be immediately federalized). Any attempt to actually deploy state troops against federal law enforcement, even when they're aren't justly enforcing laws, would be met with the Insurrection Act, allowing the deployment of active duty troops against the states, not just the Guard. Trump has been eagerly awaiting that moment, as it would allow him to completely cut the state off from the rest of the country, including Congress (you're in rebellion, you have no representation), and lock their elections in legal limbo.

Nowadays, the 2A is used simply to guarantee gun access to individuals, a movement underway since the early civil rights movement in the late '50s and largely confirmed with the Heller decision in '08. Unfortunately, that movement didn't bring any right to actually resist government overreach, which is why we haven't seen citizen militias form to violently resist ICE's own violence. They'd simply be killed and imprisoned and used to justify an increase in violence.

Personally, these events have really exposed the moral bankruptcy of the modern 2A movement. They want guns, and the attendant increase in shootings that accompany that, but have brought no real ability to resist government violence along with it. So we have the negative without the purported positive.

Obviously the next Congress and President will need to reform how the Guard works and how it can be deployed, otherwise we'll see this again.

[colechristensen]

We're not yet at the level yet.

Just the possibility of an armed population resisting still gives them pause. But we're not at the level of the theoretical threat becoming realized.

If the people too eagerly exercise it they'll be used as justification for further oppression. Resistance is political. Unfortunately most of our politicians are spineless cowards on both sides.

But it is not at all a mystery about how things got to be the way they were in the 1930s. I've heard people I know advocate for atrocities.