823
Opinion: Brace yourselves: whatever crazy, awful things Trump may have done to date, it’s only going to get worse
(www.theglobeandmail.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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politics
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The 2A was about maintaining state militias to catch runaway slaves and to suppress slave rebellions. The south wanted it, the north didn't care. At the time the amendments were being written, here was little to no discussion of the idea that an armed citizenry would be able to resist state tyranny. They had just fought a revolution and had a very clear idea of what it took to break away from England. It was a lot more than farmers with hunting rifles or posses of slave-catchers.
I'm not saying that armed resistance is not necessary. I'm just saying the 2A was never really for that. But there are many examples of barely armed citizen's movements overthrowing governments. Without compliance, without legitimacy, their power can be broken.
I'd somehow never heard this argument before, so I found some random article about it: https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2023/06/slavery-militias-and-methodologies-thoughts-on-carl-boguss-madisons-militia
I can't speak to the quality of the source above, but they argue that your basic thesis is true, but is not the full story. All the former colonies (including non-slave states) wanted militias instead of a peacetime national military, which was as much or more of a driver for adoption of the 2nd amendment than the idea of using militias for appearing slave rebellions.
But that's just literally the first article I read about it, so I dunno.
The other data point that's useful is that, in the Continental Congress and in the political debates that led to the writing of the Constitution, there were constant complaints (mainly from the southern states) that northern states were negligent in maintaining the readiness of their militias. After the Constitution was written, this continued, and was one of the main reasons that US military leadership was predominantly southern: they got early military experience in their state militias.