What do YOU think the 2nd amendment means?

[Ironside]

The thing that creeps me out the most is that if you give most foreigners a magic button that will disarm america's masses with out amending the constitution or anything....they would hit it

Well that has more to do with your fantical (atleast in my eyes) devotion to a paper written about 240 years ago. Sometimes it sounds like they were divine beings and that the constitution is always and will always be right. But explaining the importance of the constitition in your eyes for them would certainly make them ammend the constitution first.

Personally I feel thst the point of it as a defense against the goverment has fallen a long time ago. Making sure that the loyalty of the military ultimatly lies with the people is much, much more inportant. To counter Kaiser's point's:

what they fail to realize is that such a ban would prevent:

A. Lawful citizens from defending themselves against Illegally Armed Criminals.

Sometimes yes. But that's with shotguns or handguns, not handgranades, tanks or M16. And the criminals will get it easier to get handguns and other weapons too.

B. Hunters to make a living.

Hunters don't need military grade weapons to hunt. Any reasonable country gets the weapons licensed and you'll need a gun license to use it. Annoying yes, but you can atleast be certain that hunters can use thier weapon properly.

C. Any protection from an outside invader with the exception of the US military (i.e. No Immediate Protection) or from internal opression.

As the military would be a much bigger threat to an invasion force then the militia, it's quite pointless to arm the population, unless more imminent threat is occuring. If they can beat your army so quickly that you cannot prepare your nation for war, what's the point of the militia?

D. Any form of Security of Defense against foreign agents or aliens attempting to harm this nation from the inside.

More and less the same as the above.

Now on the most important part, the threat from within or the evil goverment. The point is that the best way to take the US (or any other country) is either the "make them love me style" used in Iraq (were I'm sure that the average Iraqi is really loving their freedom of guns before the invasion and how that has been used afterwards ) with better methods or the Gehenna-style invasion, were obliterating cities is an option to consider if those rebels gets too annoying. As the nice invasion styles is easily achived from the inside, by an election, only the second alternative is valid for this oppresive goverment.

We can assume that it takes control of the military, so only partisan activity can be used by the militia, as they are heavily outgunned by the goverment. Now partisan activity and guerilla warfare has been working before as seen in several places, but in Vietnam they couldn't strike at the enemies main base, and weren't motivated enough (this oppressive goverment cannot afford to lose, they will die (executed) if they fail), Iraq is because the US cannot afford destroying cities or look like heavy oppressors and Afghanistan because most of it is in the middle of noware. Surely partisans can survive in the US, but the goverment will control most of the population and infrastructure and the damage this partisans can do will be minor. The goverment cannot rule forever with fear, but that's a different issue.

You can of course arm the population much more, so your neighbour got that tank or airplane, but ask yourself this question: Are you willing to live near a neighbour that have spended millions of dollars on weaponry, with the purpose to use them against the goverment if they get too bad?

Now I've showed that that's pointless to get those weapons, but I admit that it can be fun to use them (for target shooting for example)
But that means that the point to own weapons, fully capable of killing dozens/hundreds of people is because they are fun?

Oh and it wasn't the militia that stopped the Nazi to invade Switzerland. Why didn't they invade Sweden?

Did I miss something?