• paddirn@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    That’s what 2A supporters will tell you it’s there for, but I don’t believe that was ever the original intent of it. Imagine the government slipping in an amendment that could potentially lead to their own overthrow, that just sounds suicidal, especially since that could be abused by people who don’t even have legitimate grievances and just want to overthrow the government to take power for themselves.

    Rather, the Second Amendment has its roots in a series of popular uprisings, the Regulator movement (1766–1771), which was opposed to corruption in government. When the government went to put down these uprisings however, they had trouble raising the necessary forces for their militias, militias which were intended to put down popular uprisings. So the Founding Fathers were very conscious of this at the time the Constitution was written, it was expected citizens would have their own weapons so that they could be called upon for these state militias.

    Tl;dr the purpose of the “well-regulated militia” in the 2nd Amendment was to put down rebellions, not enable them.