Look, I'm glad we're having a conversation about the hypocrisy of the legal logic used by America's gun nuts.
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Look, I'm glad we're having a conversation about the hypocrisy of the legal logic used by America's gun nuts. But can we stop pretending this is a new thing? They have never advocated for universal access to firearms. They only want their team to be armed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/25/alex-pretti-gun-debate-second-amendment/
@SeanCasten There are other countries, eg the UK, in which immigration raids are met by local protesters.
And nobody got shot.
How come? - the police don't have guns, simples.
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I recommend Carol Anderson's book "The Second" if you want to understand this history, and how we got 2A in the first place. It was decidedly NOT about making sure that future Alex Prettis could protect themselves from racist ICE agents who came on a Somali fraud pretext and started killing.
The TL;DR though is in plain text in the Constitution. When 2A referenced a well arm militia you can assume the writers were using that term in the same way they used it in the body of the Constitution, where Congress had the right to summon militias for only 3 reasons:
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The TL;DR though is in plain text in the Constitution. When 2A referenced a well arm militia you can assume the writers were using that term in the same way they used it in the body of the Constitution, where Congress had the right to summon militias for only 3 reasons:
1) to enforce the laws of the US; 2) to defend against foreign invasions and 3) to suppress domestic insurrections. The folks who wrote this had direct, recent experience with Shay's Rebellion, the Revolutionary War and lived in constant fear of slave rebellions. 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
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(As an aside, the fact that these ideas go back to our inception when only 6% of the population could vote, thus sustaining that minority power largely explains why the most democracy-fearing members of the Supreme Court are all "originalists". But I digress.)
@SeanCasten Agree, we’ve never truly had a representative democracy with majority rule. Reform the Senate and expand the House! https://connor.site/2025/representative-democracy-is-worth-fighting-for/
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1) to enforce the laws of the US; 2) to defend against foreign invasions and 3) to suppress domestic insurrections. The folks who wrote this had direct, recent experience with Shay's Rebellion, the Revolutionary War and lived in constant fear of slave rebellions. 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
Suffice to say that in the modern world, our nation's gun nuts are really not wild about the US government using a militia to enforce the law (see: Ruby Ridge, Waco, Constitutional Sheriff movement, etc.)
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Suffice to say that in the modern world, our nation's gun nuts are really not wild about the US government using a militia to enforce the law (see: Ruby Ridge, Waco, Constitutional Sheriff movement, etc.)
And given the size and power of the US military (esp as compared to our founding era when we neither had a standing army nor the tax system to pay for it) it also doesn't make any sense to suggest Congress might need to call up well regulated militias to defend against foreign invasion.
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And given the size and power of the US military (esp as compared to our founding era when we neither had a standing army nor the tax system to pay for it) it also doesn't make any sense to suggest Congress might need to call up well regulated militias to defend against foreign invasion.
But the fear of "domestic insurrectionists" from Denmark Vesey to the Black Panthers is still there. And it's not accidental that the Scalia court ruled in Heller that the first 13 words of 2A are "merely prefatory" and no longer apply.
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But the fear of "domestic insurrectionists" from Denmark Vesey to the Black Panthers is still there. And it's not accidental that the Scalia court ruled in Heller that the first 13 words of 2A are "merely prefatory" and no longer apply.
'cause they don't want to be a well regulated militia. They just want the right to kill people who they, in their sole discretion deem to be domestic insurrectionists. Is that what they say? No. But as the old saw goes: watch their feet, not their lips. /fin
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@SeanCasten Agree, we’ve never truly had a representative democracy with majority rule. Reform the Senate and expand the House! https://connor.site/2025/representative-democracy-is-worth-fighting-for/
@connor As a certain MA Senator would say: I've got a plan for that. https://casten.house.gov/media/press-releases/casten-introduces-package-of-legislation-to-reform-american-democracy
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And given the size and power of the US military (esp as compared to our founding era when we neither had a standing army nor the tax system to pay for it) it also doesn't make any sense to suggest Congress might need to call up well regulated militias to defend against foreign invasion.
@SeanCasten Isn't the national guard the well-regulated militia? Cause they were called as much as the "regular" military to fight abroad. Sometimes moreso.
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And given the size and power of the US military (esp as compared to our founding era when we neither had a standing army nor the tax system to pay for it) it also doesn't make any sense to suggest Congress might need to call up well regulated militias to defend against foreign invasion.
@SeanCasten The well regulated militia is the National Guard, the existence of which is supposed to prevent federal tyranny by avoiding the need for a standing federal army to operate on US soil or operate abroad without a Congressional declaration of war for that matter. Since we have a permanent federal army always operating abroad, we’ve violated this principle since at least WWII and thus haven’t restrained the military industrial complex as Eisenhower warned.
https://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-Biography-Michael-Waldman/dp/1476747458
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Look, I'm glad we're having a conversation about the hypocrisy of the legal logic used by America's gun nuts. But can we stop pretending this is a new thing? They have never advocated for universal access to firearms. They only want their team to be armed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/25/alex-pretti-gun-debate-second-amendment/
@SeanCasten Just ask Philando Castile.
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@SeanCasten Just ask Philando Castile.
@Twotired exactly right
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And given the size and power of the US military (esp as compared to our founding era when we neither had a standing army nor the tax system to pay for it) it also doesn't make any sense to suggest Congress might need to call up well regulated militias to defend against foreign invasion.
And given the size and power of the US military (esp as compared to our founding era when we neither had a standing army nor the tax system to pay for it)
And strong objections to having one at all. Several of the founding fathers wrote on this subject and it was quite controversial when the US eventually did get a standing army. Unfortunately, modern warfare requires sufficient training (and has enough specialised rôles) that a standing army is necessary if you face possible attack from a country that has one.
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@SeanCasten Isn't the national guard the well-regulated militia? Cause they were called as much as the "regular" military to fight abroad. Sometimes moreso.
Not necessarily. In Illinois the militia still exists , separate from the guard. It hasn't had an actual, official role or, even people, for probably over a century. Nowadays it is used to grant symbolic status to Civil War re-enactors and living history buffs.
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'cause they don't want to be a well regulated militia. They just want the right to kill people who they, in their sole discretion deem to be domestic insurrectionists. Is that what they say? No. But as the old saw goes: watch their feet, not their lips. /fin
Postscript: Here are two people who brought guns to a protest and are not only still alive, but were subsequently invited to speak at the 2020 RNC. The fact that this protest was in support of George Floyd does not imply a contradiction in the gun nut world view.
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Look, I'm glad we're having a conversation about the hypocrisy of the legal logic used by America's gun nuts. But can we stop pretending this is a new thing? They have never advocated for universal access to firearms. They only want their team to be armed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/25/alex-pretti-gun-debate-second-amendment/
@SeanCasten I don't think that gun folks would generally be happy with a campaign to arm the homeless.
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Not necessarily. In Illinois the militia still exists , separate from the guard. It hasn't had an actual, official role or, even people, for probably over a century. Nowadays it is used to grant symbolic status to Civil War re-enactors and living history buffs.
@deedeeque We used to have that in Alabama. I was an officer in it for 8 years. We were take too our local e EMA, and and took care of armories when the NG was deployed. The big difference was we couldn't be federalized. @SeanCasten
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To suggest that there is some intellectual inconsistency between an ideology that says it's OK if George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse shoot people in the street but a capital crime if Alex Pretti is carrying is to assume that their stated policy is their actual logic. It ain't.
@SeanCasten@mastodon.social FWIW, I’m not interested in calling the NRA out in their hyprocrisy because I think it will make them uncomfortable, let alone change them. I mean, I hope for at least some discomfort, but it’s not the point.
The point is for all the people who hear their stated policy and believe it to go through that discomfort. Most won’t have a problem, but some will, and that’s fewer people to give them money and fuel their lobbying engine. It’s fewer people that see them as an authority or at all respectable.
Pointing out hypocrisy won’t change the hypocrites, but it can show people who haven’t paid attention who the hypocrites are.
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Postscript: Here are two people who brought guns to a protest and are not only still alive, but were subsequently invited to speak at the 2020 RNC. The fact that this protest was in support of George Floyd does not imply a contradiction in the gun nut world view.
Halloween 2020
