STRICTLY playing the devil's advocate here.....
Satan wrote:Don't be silly! You can't possibly take on a "tyrannical" government with just your little rifles!!!
The Annoyed Man wrote:Oh you of little faith! Ask the Vietcong or the Taliban, not to mention our original American patriots.
Satan wrote:The founding fathers could not have conceived of the kind of firepower in civilian hands today, and did not write the 2nd Amendment with modern weapons in civilian hands in mind. It was written to protect the right to own muskets.
The Annoyed Man wrote:The founding fathers could not have conceived of high-volume web-fed 8 color newspaper printing presses, telephones, the Internet, personal computers, television, radio, cellphones, video-conferencing, email, digital cameras (or even film cameras, for that matter) etc., when they wrote the 1st Amendment. Therefore, you must surrender ALL electronic gadgetry which you use for communicating and go back to oral speech, and the hand-written word........using quill pens and liquid ink, and the hand-drawn/painted image........by candle-light.
Satan wrote:The founding fathers wrote the 3rd Amendment in a time when the King forced colonists to quarter British troops in their private homes. It's an anachronism we can dispense with because it would never happen today.
The Annoyed Man wrote:You cannot predict the future, nobody can, so you cannot say that it will not be needed in the future. The reason it would not happen today is that there are 300+ million firearms in the hands of 100+ million firearms owners, representing 60+ million households. And of those 300+ million firearms, more than 4 million are AR15s. That 4 million does not include the AK47s and other semiautomatic modern sporting arms based on originally military designs that are in private hands.
HOWEVER the reason it needs to stay in the Constitution is for the day when your side confiscates privately owned firearms. When that happens, and after the bloodbath your side started is over, THEN you will need the protections of the "vestigial" 3rd Amendment to protect your precious self from having to quarter government troops in your home.
I could go on...... But frankly, I think that people who are SO dense about their own constitutional protections would never understand the historical, legal, and constitutional implications. There are none so ignorant as those who are willfully so.