"what he said was absolutely inane"

Not that anybody ever uses sarcasm on Mudcat to make a point.   Of course not. Certainly not I.


Look, in the future I envision, gun owners will have a choice. Either they can show up regularly for drill, as the Founding Fathers intended (which would fit with their own insistence on strict constructionism--and drill will include all elements I mentioned earlier on the thread.) Or they can recognize that the 2nd Amendment has long since lost any imagined utility it ever had---and it had precious little at the time of passage. Its main thrust, that a "well-organized miltia" could substitute for a standing army (due to the, at least partially justified, fear of a standing army which dominated political thinking at the time) was an almost unmitigated disaster from the start. As recognized by people like Washington at the time.

And as I have been saying, on this and other related threads, since the day of the Newtown shootings.

If this whole hideous situation has any ghost of a silver lining, perhaps a possible one will be a rise in respect for the study of history. If the NRA and its brilliant defenders on and off Mudcat--including 5 of 9 Justices of the Supreme Court--had made any effort to study the history of the Bill of Rights period, perhaps they would not make quite so spectacularly stupid and ignorant comments on the 2nd Amendment.

Unless of course they intend to stay ignorant.   Interestingly enough, continuing ignorance is in fact their best defense.

One of the many ironies of the situation is the degree to which otherwise sensible people have swallowed the mythology that seems to support the NRA defense of the 2nd Amendment--especially the notion that the Revolution was won by "guys with guns".    Wrong.    Washington despaired uncounted times before 1783 that he was expected to win with a bunch of guys with guns against the world's top military power.   What he wanted was not guys with guns but an army. To a large, but not total, extent, he eventually got one.   And even so, it was a near thing.   1781 was the last chance, he was told by the French, and only the constellation of events leading to Yorktown made it work. Many people don't realize the danger the 13 colonies were under in 1781 to have a mediated solution imposed on them--which very likely would not have included a US of all all 13 colonies--or perhaps not independence at all.

Even after Yorktown, as I've mentioned earlier on Mudcat,, American independence was not a sure thing. Only the change in government in the UK made it possible.

History is worth studying--if only to be able to make informed comment on current events.