I've Been Accused of being Liberal. Okay I'm laying my cards on the table

JimEverett said

That is a good point.
However, I still think that if you believe that THE reason for the 2nd Amendment is the ability for armed rebellion against a tyrannical central governemnt the the dilemma I set up still applies.
I mean if that is the purpose of it then we should give great deference to the people in their ability to own anything the government owns - since we want the people to be able to fight the central government.

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I agree that if THE reason is the ability to overthrow the government then it is a weak reason. A determined population could pursue a rebellion even against the modern US army, but clearly we don't have all of the "tools" in order to be highly succesful at it available to us. Therefore that can't be considered the sole or even primary reason for the 2nd amendment anymore.

I fall back on my "personnal protection" point of view. Which I think also has validity from an "original intent" position because clearly personnal protection was even more of an issue at that time then now. The ability to "rebel" is simply the large scale expression of that, i.e. the ability to protect yourself from the government.

The "right" has been chipped away on the top end (ability to protect yourself from the government) but the core principal remains.