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ubertacotoday at 12:34 AM0 repliesview on HN

The text of the second amendment, as written, would seem to indicate that the premise of the second amendment is to arm "a well-regulated militia" (which was relevant to the government that adopted the second amendment, as it had no standing army).

It was basically crowdsourcing the military. We've been running through all the various problems with that idea ever since, including:

- oops, turns out not enough people volunteer and our whole army got nearly wiped out; maybe we need to pay people to be an army for a living (ca. 1791)

- oops, turns out allowing the public to arm themselves and be their own militia can lead people being their own separate militia factions against the government, I guess we don't want that (e.g. Shay's Rebellion, John Brown and various slave rebellions fighting for freedom)

- oops, turns out part of the army can just decide they're a whole new country's army now, guess we don't want that (the civil war)

- oops, turns out actually everyone having guns means any given individual can just shoot whomever they like (like in hundreds of school shootings and mass shootings)

- oops, turns out we gotta give our police force even bigger guns and tanks and stuff so they won't be scared of random normal people on the street having guns (and look where that's gotten us)

Honestly, the whole thing should've been heavily amended to something more sane back in 1791 when the Legion of the United States (the first standing army) was formed, as they were already punting on the mistaken notion that "a well-regulated militia" was the answer instead of "a professional standing army".