Turn to the words of Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, if you wonder where the seed of thought came from suggesting the Second Amendment is there to protect us against our own government becoming tyrannical.
If I'm reading Hamilton right, what he is driving at is that if the military is composed of enough citizens, there will be enough among them those who won't go along with government taking away the rights of the people.
After all, if the army is composed of the citizenry, they aren't going to fight to take away their own rights.
Here's are Hamilton's words: "If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens."
So, is Hamilton arguing that everyone should own guns so they can rise up in militias if the government becomes tyrannical? Or, is he arguing that enough people ought to be in the military so that it will represent the people, thus ensuring that the military will not rise up against them, because they are the military?
I think it is the latter. I think the second thought is the thought Hamilton had in mind.
I don't know but what there aren't other quotes that would give us an idea of where the notion came from that the Second Amendment is there to protect us against tyrannical government. If this quote from Hamilton is the source, however, it would seem that rather than private gun ownership, the cause that everybody should be getting uptight about is whether there are enough of us enlisted in the military so that that military cannot rise up against us.
That should be the grand cause. Instead, it is a cause we've never even heard of. Just saying.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1318670/posts
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