The 2nd Amendment and foreign policy

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In the wake of the movie theater shooting in Colorado I’ve been thinking a lot about gun control. I’m going to put up some short posts to stimulate conversation and help focus my ideas.

It has been interpreted that one of the main reasons the founding fathers believed that we should be able to own guns was so that we could overthrow our government if it was necessary. I’m not going to get into the details of what constitutes “a well regulated Militia” in this argument. I am going to focus on the fact that when this was written, there were no machine guns, airplanes, nuclear bombs, helicopters, tanks, drones, heat-seeking missiles or poison gas. All of which are “arms” in today’s world. There also wasn’t an internet,Twitter or cell phones to communicate- nor satellite imagery of the battlefield in real time.

When Muammar Gaddafi turned his army on the people of Libya, we and other nations decided to jump in to help. It was the “right thing to do” to prevent genocide and to even out the battle between the populist uprising and an evil dictator.

So, considering the uprising in Syria has been going on since March 15 of 2011, and that Assad has been using tanks, helicopters and jets against people who are throwing bottles and rocks, why hasn’t the U.S. stepped in?

Is Assad a better dictator? Is Syrian citizens’ blood less valuable than Libyan citizens’ blood? Or is it that Libya has better natural resources?

If we were to rise up against our government, with our little arsenals of Spaz 12’s, AR-15s and .50-caliber sniper rifles (all popular with the pro-gun factions) are they really going to do much against an F-22, an Apache Attack Helicopter or an Abrams Tank? What country is going to step in and tell our military not to shoot our uprising? And how long will Canada’s Air Force exist when they do? You can watch the movie “Red Dawn” all you want, but if our ability to protect ourselves from our government is dependent on us owning arms, we’re outgunned. It’s not even bringing a gun to a knife fight- it’s like sending in a newborn to take on Mike Tyson.

When are we going to step in to help Syria? And when is the fallacy that owning guns will protect us from an unjust government going to stop being part of the argument?

 

 

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