• Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    I think the biggest difference between then and now in that regard isn’t the meaning of “well regulated”. It’s “being necessary to the security of a free State”. The expectation at the time was that we wouldn’t have a standing professional army to defend the nation in times of war, and we’d have to conscript militias. This was the norm at the time, and the US being a new, and therefore poor, nation, that is what the plan was. However, that isn’t the case anymore. The whole second amendment hinges on militias being necessary, and since it isn’t its moot.

    I’m fine with “gun rights” and ownership of firearms, with reasonable expectations. I think they’re fun to use, and they have a purpose. A certain level of training and competency should be required though (training paid by taxes so poor people can also own them), and should include proper storage lessons.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Oh, it’s way deeper and messier than that…

      https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment

      “It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising. And … James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias — and those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts. … The Second Amendment really provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed, that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings.”