On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 5:20 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12/19/2014 1:38 PM, LizR wrote: > > On 19 December 2014 at 23:15, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 2:24 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> They also failed to foresee that hand-held weapons would become so >>> powerful. >>> >>>> >>>> You're referring to these: >> http://www.damninteresting.com/davy-crockett-king-of-the-atomic-frontier/ >> ? >> >> Wish I'd seen that before I made my last post! Yes, exactly. If the US > govt was serious about the right to bear arms those would be on sale in > Wal-mart or K-mart, or whatever they're called. Yet I bet even the NRA > doesn't advocate that. > > > It's extrapolating from a false premise. The purpose of the right-to-bear > arms was to avoid the need for a standing army - not to create some > balanced opposition to one. >
In the federalist papers, John Adams considers the fact that governments struggle to raise and support armies of more than 1% of their populations, while the percentage of a population able to offer armed resistance within a nation may be as high as 25%. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it, however, be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government: still it would not be going too far to say the State governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country *does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls*; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for the common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the late successful resistance of this country against the British arms will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments of the several kingdoms of Europe , which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms . And it is not certain that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance that the throne of every tyranny of Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. > Every able bodied male citizen was assumed to be a member of "the > militia", i.e. could be called upon for defense. > According to existing U.S. federal laws ( http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/311 ), every male from 17 to 45 is still considered to be part of the unorganized militia. > Only arms appropriate to single soldier would be guaranteed. Not an > airforce or a nuclear weapon or even a heavy machine gun which usually has > a two or three man crew. > > Perhaps that was in the minds of the people who wrote the amendment, but cannons and warships existed at the time, and they weren't listed as exceptions. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
