[at-fates-hands]

>> Switzerland is biased because of the militan army approach. Every able-bodied Swiss male has an assault rifle at home, without any bullets, however.

This was exactly the purpose of the text in the second amendment when they talk about having a "well regulated militia":

The phrase “well-regulated” was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people’s arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.

source: http://bearingarms.com/well-regulated/

Essentially this meant every citizen should be properly armed should they be called into duty for defending the country. Sure, a lot has changed since then, but most gun owners I know still take this wording very seriously and believe it is their duty to defend against government tyranny.

[rayiner]

> Essentially this meant every citizen should be properly armed should they be called into duty for defending the country. Sure, a lot has changed since then, but most gun owners I know still take this wording very seriously and believe it is their duty to defend against government tyranny.

I don't see how you get from point A ("well-regulated" means keeping in proper working order) to point B (the purpose of the militia was to defend against government tyranny).

One of the motivating purposes of the Constitutional Convention was to respond to the failure of the state militias to put down armed rebellions against the government. Whether or not the second amendment guarantees the right to own personal firearms, the idea that the framers intended those firearms be used against the government is ludicrous. The most reasonable conclusion from the primary materials is that those well-regulated militias exist to put down those who would take up arms against the government!

[hga]

Errr, how about Thomas Jefferson in 1789, after the Revolutionary War just to be clear? From Wikiquote:

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

But he was most certainly a firebrand, and you do have a point about motivations for our current Constitution if this book is to be believed: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13777.html (it's new (2003) and sounds revisionist, but that doesn't mean it's incorrect, just that as with anything historically political like it it has to be checked, see e.g. Arming America).

[rayiner]

Thomas Jefferson was a lot of things, but one of the things he wasn't was at the Constitutional Convention. His writings evidence strains of thought that existed at the time of the founding, but to the extent that you can divine some sort of "intent" on the part of the 40 people who signed the Constitution, his writings do not clarify that intent.

[hga]

We do indeed take that duty seriously, but the purpose of that bit of text was more of a sop to a losing side in the Constitutional debate, that wanted to depend on militias instead of formal armies, which everyone agreed were a long term danger to liberty. People like George Washington convincingly argued from their Revolutionary War experience that militias weren't a complete solution.

Needless to say, like the Revolutionary War smoothbore musket (not necessarily as useful for hunting as a slow to load back then rifle), today's "assault weapons" are the arms particularly suited for that duty.