jpariury
Duke
Clearly, the society of ST, in all its iterations, has never been perfect.Robb Graves said:
That's an argument for military-like organization, not for a militia in and of itself, particularly in a utopia. Point is, if the world were perfect, there'd be no need for guns to begin with. (Although, there's certainly an argument to be made that perfection is a subjective standard, therefore, any discussion about whether or not they're needed depends on an agreed-upon measure.)
I am not buying the argument that the second amendment was intended to mean "combatant employees of the state shall not have their right to a duty-piece infringed". Within the context of what a militia was during the time of authorship, members of a militia were expected to provide their own firearms. This is reinforced within the Militia Act of 1792, which included within it a call to duty for members to provide their own piece within six months of enlistment. I don't see any way around the intent to protect the individual freedom to possess arms. The lead-in establishes why protecting the individual freedom was in the State's interest, but was intentionally never written as restrictive. For instance, they could have easily excluded cannon from the clause, a weapon with no purpose other than violence against your fellow man (no hunting quail with them, for instance), yet made no such distinction because it was in the State's interest for private citizens to possess them.
