Orwellian is an anachronism here.

It was probably meant to protect to right of the people to engage in a violent revolution when required, and enacted by people who had literally done so to create the United States.

This is how I learned 2A. More or less, no government can last forever and at some point governments will need to be overthrown and set anew. Sound familiar?

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

They even provided some basic criteria for when might be a good time:

> Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I was taught that 2A was the tool that ensures that this section of the Declaration of Independence would still be relevant to their new government.

If not, why? Where are the limits in the constitution on the types of arms a person can own?

This is especially relevant if the goal of the 2S is to be able to stand up to the US armed forces.

Or is it your view that the goal of the 2A is for a poorly armed mob to be able to rise up in collective suicide against better armed better trained government forces?

You need to define the hypothetical 'sides' here a little better. Is this armed mob fighting for principles that many members of the 'government forces' agree with? Would this government force be willing to kill large numbers of their neighbors and fellow countrymen?

A surprisingly effective resistance can be made by an outnumbered/outgunned 'mob', assuming they have some basic weapons. Home field advantage and guerrilla warfare go pretty far. See: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Ukraine.

Very interesting.

A personal right to fully automatic weapons, SAMs, tanks, anti-tank, etc.

Yeah, I don't think so.

Militia is used 6 times in the Constitution and collected amendments. I tend to think that it means the same thing in the 2A as in the 5 places.

I believe the militia clause actually means state level armed service, such as was common in the various states at the time.

You on the other hand are an egotistical ass with 220 karma and behavior to boot.

Yawn.

But I suppose you want an answer, so how about this: infantry weapons that a regular citizen can reasonably afford and practice with (i.e. shoot on a regular basis).

So military-style automatic rifles, machine guns, etc.

This question seems loaded, especially after how you started it with "if you believe this" when I already stated the foundational belief I have, but I'll take your question in good faith.

Citizens can already own rockets and missiles? Yes, they can, which is why there's private space companies. That has very little to do with 2A. As far as I'm aware an FFL (Federal Firearms License) would not give you access to chemical weapons. It's also not that hard for citizens to produce chemical weapons with household cleaners, but that also is beside the point.

2A, and pretty much anything below an FFL, is mainly the subject of my discussion. With an FFL a citizen can purchase pretty much any weapon, including a tank, or explosive.

> Where are the limits in the constitution on the types of arms a person can own?

Various states have attempted to circumvent the federal governments monopoly on this law, but I guess you could start to form some specific criteria by looking here: https://www.atf.gov/firearms/apply-license You'd have to cross these with state laws; some are very permissive, others not.

> This is especially relevant if the goal of the 2S is to be able to stand up to the US armed forces.

I mean, it's not that hard. The Taliban did it and they mostly had assault rifles, REX, grenades, and rockets (the anti-tank kind, not the artillery kind). I'll also address this in the next answer.

> Or is it your view that the goal of the 2A is for a poorly armed mob to be able to rise up in collective suicide against better armed better trained government forces?

There are several types of militias, two predominately in the US [2]. The first is a private militia [3]; to my knowledge in current day most of these are just extremists, but in a scenario that necessitated separating from the federal government I would assume people would start forming their own legitimate militias. How effective a militia would be would likely depend on their knowledge of tactics that the US military would employ. The second type is the state national guard [1]. State guards are trained by federal military but serve the states and are under the states command. National guard numbers, when fighting a federal power, would not be sufficient though. Supply lines would likely be disrupted and choked as well, so citizens and their weapons would be needed.

The short of it is no, I don't think it'll be just some randos running around fighting and causing an insurrection. It'd be coordinated state action alongside citizen militias if things came to that. To me, though, all these things help keep the government in check because the power of the federal government is not larger than the sum of collective state action.

Edit:

I also don't really appreciate the "fantasy" comment. I'm a U.S. citizen, I don't want any of that to happen. History shows that the influence of militias and participation was key in forming the US and was key throughout the politics of staying together as a country. Private citizens having access to weapons was key to early militias and you can't really separate the two at any point in history. For a more contiguous history: https://angrystaffofficer.com/2017/03/20/a-short-history-of-... (this does leave out that states actually have laws regulating private militias, though that's the only thing I could find wrong with it)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_(United_States).... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia 3: https://law.jrank.org/pages/10067/Second-Amendment-PRIVATE-M...

If this was the actual interpretation being promulgated legally then there's all sorts of weird follow ups to it: i.e. any ruling or law which increases the level of security and protections of government institutions against some definition of an armed citizen militia would be against the spirit of the 2nd amendment because you're reducing the ability of the citizenry to engage in a successful violent insurrection.

This is a perfectly sensible precedent: if the Second Amendment is interpreted as an intent to allow armed revolution, then for some legal definition of a "just" revolution the arms of the citizenry must allow them to fight and win, and this could be reasonably interpreted therefore as "the government may implement no security measures which make it so safe it could not be overthrown".

Not really. You can only go places like that if you use an interpretive framework were words can be stretched past the breaking point and speculations piled one on top of the other to take you anywhere where you want to go. A lot of people think that's not a reasonable way to interpret the law, and they do have a point.

> This is a perfectly sensible precedent...

If that's "perfectly sensible precedent," cite the case that established it.

That it is not established is because the SC has definitely not interpreted the 2nd to mean "power to overthrow the government" - but it has mostly managed to do that by completely disregarding the first half of the 2nd's wording in favor of "citizens may own small arms" - which is oddly specific given the rest of the phrasing, but that was the conclusion they drew from Heller[1]

I'm responding to the claim that the "founders" intended it for armed insurrection: did they? Because the Court does not interpret it that way, and if it did then you do in fact have to answer questions about why any limits on owning hardware sufficient to overthrow the government are allowed.

A claim about Founder's intent in the constitution isn't some idle statement: the purpose and reason for the Supreme Court is to carry through interpretation of that the intent of the constitution for law of the land, otherwise why bother saying it? If we're going to ignore law and precedent then none of this matters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller...

Even so, your interpretation had another fatal flaw: you weren't balancing any interests.

But in any case, it's still a nonsense straw man.

>>> This is a perfectly sensible precedent...

>> If that's "perfectly sensible precedent," cite the case that established it.

> That it is not established is because...

Then it's not a precedent.

> I'm responding to the claim that the "founders" intended it for armed insurrection: did they?

The founders literally committed armed insurrection, and IIRC it's pretty well documented that the understood the necessity of armed revolution in certain circumstances. I believe there are even some direct quotes in this thread. I can also recall off the top one that spoke positively of a rebellion every 20 years:

https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tre...:

> God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

I was very clearly referring to the fact that if the 2nd amendment were to be taken as an intent to allow citizens to revolt against the government then it is not clear on what grounds the seemingly absurd corollaries of that, as a legal position, would be dismissed. Which you haven't addressed at all except to say "but it's not actually precedent yet!"

It is not - because the Supreme Court has very obviously in Heller not interpreted it that way. So I don't know of what value anyone can argue this was the intent because the body defining the law of the land and the interpretation of the constitution does not agree with you.

But even if we grant the SC is not the be all and end all, you still haven't managed to actually address why that position would be absurd? What use are firearms against a Federal government which, to take an extreme example, gives itself Dune-style shields for all officers and personnel, but not civilians. Why are limits on arms, actually suitable to overthrow the government - so say, maybe a whole lot of Javelin anti-tank missiles as they are currently proving useful - not within the remit of the 2nd?

How so? It's not a word that would have been known to the founders, but neither is "2A". It makes no sense to claim that when we talk about the founders, we can't legitimately use our own language but must instead use theirs.

"Orwellian" is specifically modern ideological term with a lot of specifically modern connotations (e.g. a technological surveillance state) that are misleading when talking about people from the 18th century. My sense is it's a whole lot narrower than what the founders had in mind.

On the other hand, the Second Amendment was literally written by one of the founders.

> It makes no sense to claim that when we talk about the founders, we can't legitimately use our own language but must instead use theirs.

Use anachronisms all you want, no one's stopping you. It just that by leaning on them, you're likely spout nonsense and either confuse yourself or confuse others.

Also, there's important differences between "modern language" and "anachronism."

Civil asset forfeiture is pretty Orwellian, IMO, not to mention a direct violation of your Fourth Amendment rights, yet I haven't heard of anybody using their Second Amendment right to protect themselves from it.

But I don’t think turning out to the streets with AR-15s is an appropriate response to the government forming an ineffective propaganda office (ministry of truth). We’ve seen the awful cost of civil war both here at home in 1861-65 and recently in countries such as Syria and Libya. Violent revolution should be the absolute last resort especially in a world where total war is practiced and not the relatively civilized and small-scale warfare of the American revolution or the 1688 English Revolution.

In practice, the US government has committed atrocities throughout history against citizens and the 2A did little to help (genocide of native Americans, discrimination against Germans in ww1, Japanese internment in ww2, Jim Crow and slavery, the civil war itself where armed citizens just joined whatever side they lived on, etc.)

I don't think the founders envisioned that at all. Your rifle is for sitting behind your door and waiting for the tyrannical government to break down your door and realize that the first person to breech is probably going to die. It's a deterrent to ensure that law enforcement is willing to do the bidding of said corrupt government. Guns are not meant to be for menacing the public. They're for defending life and property. And yeah, property.

I love how government is obviously incompetent, but only until something they do sounds conspiratorial.