The Second

I was listening to American History Hit's explanation of the 2nd amendment (the gun one), and it was quite interesting. I basically love AHH.

According to AHH, its huge importance, the fact that everyone is always talking about it, the fact that it is the one amendment that almost everyone knows about (there are 27 total), is relatively new; it was ratified in 1791, but for most of the intervening years, wasn't particularly discussed.

I knew there was some debate about the actual intention of the writers of the amendment, and I knew that there was a concept of "originalists": present-day jurists (eg SCOTUS judges) who believe in interpreting the Constitution according to (what they perceive as) the original intent of its writers.

I knew that the exact meaning of "militia" is part of this debate; did they really intend for every Tom Dick and Harry to be carrying guns around Walmart to, in theory, defend themselves against a) other citizens b) their own government and c) only incidentally, foreign attack?

According to the podcast guest, who is clearly strongly pro-gun CONTROL, they intended c), and she also made a distinction between "individual" and "collective" rights.

Key to this argument, and something I absolutely did NOT know, was that the US not only did NOT have a standing army, they saw it as something that only a tyrannical kingdom would have, and therefore, they were strongly opposed to standing armies ON PRINCIPLE.

Therefore, empowering "the people" to have guns, IN LIEU OF AN ARMY, and to PROTECT AGAINST FOREIGN INVADERS, made a lot of sense.

Everything after that is just Republican gun nuts.

She had a great quote to the effect of history will judge us (USA) very harshly for not just HAVING so much gun violence, but for TOLERATING it so willingly.