The second amendment has been our most successful change to the Constitution. The Founders’ goal was to ensure that there would be people familiar with weapons in every hamlet. That way it would be easy to pull together a militia in a few hours. At the time it was thought we needed to be ready to defend ourselves against the British (see the War of 1812) and populist mobs (see Shay’s Rebellion).
Today 72 million Americans own firearms. In theory we can call up a militia of 72 million fighters, many of them genuine shit-on-the-floor patriots.
We are currently protected from invasion by two vast oceans, regular military forces and nuclear weapons. We spend 715 billion each year maintaining our regular military. That’s too much under the circumstances. We could scale it down. Imagine an invader being met on the beaches by 72 million irrational men and women with their faces painted blue.
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