Comment Re:Whats wrong with US society (Score 1) 609
Yeah, I'm sure that the right to bear arms really means the right to own a tank, assault helicopter or nuclear weapon.
I don't think the nuclear weapon is covered for the simple fact that it isn't a weapon used to win a revolutionary war. Rather, it's a weapon designed to ensure everyone loses.
The tank and the helo? Absolutely it means that. How in the world could it not?
To claim otherwise is to claim that the First Amendment's freedom of speech doesn't cover speech on the Internet or that the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure doesn't extent to computers. The Bill of Rights isn't a listing of specific freedoms so much as it is a statement of principles.
The principle of the First Amendment's speech protection is not that you can literally vocalize ideas, but rather that you can communicate anything you want so long as it doesn't harm another person (fraud, liable) or create a major risk of serious bodily harm (inciting a riot, shouting fire in a crowded theater). The principle of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure is not that the government can't arbitrarily decide to come take products made from trees from you or look through those things; it's that the government must have a sound, rational, basis before it can search you or anything of yours whether it's a diary or a laptop. .
Likewise, the principle of the Second Amendment is not that citizens may own muskets, but rather that if a fight breaks out between the people and the government, everyone's on equal footing. Why? Because the guys who wrote the Bill of Rights had just gotten done warring with their own government and so they understood the value of being able to go toe-to-toe with a tyrant's military might.
So yes, if the military has those things and they're considered legitimate weapons for fighting and winning, then the people have the right to own those things as well. Restrictions to the contrary of that principle undermine the spirit of the Second Amendment by monopolizing force in the hands of the government at the expense of the people. Nothing would have frightened the Founding Fathers more considering what they'd just experienced.